Eighteen Years
by Kralia
Summary: Merope's story of a life that was always destined to be either miserable or corrupted. One day I'll think of a better title, and a better summary.
1. Motherly Love

MOTHERLY LOVE

Merope didn't have many memories of her mother. She remembered a small woman with a small, concise face and scraggy dark brown hair that was hopelessly tangled. And her hands. She had had very long, very thin, very pale fingers. She remembered her mother scolding her father, who seemed to be a little afraid of her. Madeline Gaunt had always been a more powerful witch than her husband.

But memories of softness, and love, and kindness, she had none. Her mother seemed to have ignored her all through her childhood. Merope did have one clear memory of interaction with her mother, though. She was six years old, and it had been a relatively happy family evening. It was Morfin's fourth birthday, and to celebrate her mother had made a birthday meal for everyone. A thick rabbit stew, with a small chocolate cake for after. Her mother had even found a couple of old wax candles, and had stuck them to the worn wooden table for the occasion. The four of them had sat around the table and eaten their food, for once at peace with each other. They had one cup left – all the others had been smashed some time in the past. Her father had sole possession of this cup, so Merope, her mother and Morfin passed around the bottle of firewhisky during the meal. Morfin had before only drunk milk or water, but his father had decided it was high time he was introduced to alcohol.

After the rabbit stew had been eaten, and the chocolate cake was being passed around, Merope's mother suddenly decided she wanted something . "Merope," she said, delicately holding a piece of cake in her white hand, "go and fetch me my comb. It is in the third drawer down in my wardrobe, and is made of bone."

Merope dutifully nodded and dropped off her chair, too high for her small legs. She had only twice been in her parents bedroom before, and that had been so long ago she could hardly remember. The room was taken up by the double bed that stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by makeshift shelves, mostly made of planks balanced on square stones. But directly in front of the bed was a huge, imposing cabinet, of shiny mahogany.

Merope tiptoed up to it and opened it, finding that it was split in half. Half was an open space filled with hung up clothes, the other was five drawers. Merope slid open the third drawer and found a mess of items. She poked through the thick metal rings, the tiny animal skulls, the black feathers, trying to find the bone comb, but to no avail. She began to look through the clothes in the hanging space. She was surprised that her mother owned such beautiful clothes – dresses made of thick purple velvet, lacy gloves, strange black shoes with complicated clasps. Without thinking what she was doing, she picked up a pair of heeled leather boots from the bottom of the wardrobe, and slipped her small, bare feet into them.

They were ridiculously big for her, but Merope loved the feeling of wearing grown up shoes. She tottered around the room and admired her reflection in the cracked mirror hanging on the wall.

She turned around to see her mother standing at the door and faltered, the smile fading from her face.

"Remove those from your feet and put them back where you found them." Merope's mother said, icily. Merope quickly obeyed, not looking at her.

Once the shoes were safely back in the wardrobe with the door closed Merope's mother spoke again. "Now. What did I ask you to do?"

"To get your comb." Merope mumbled, staring at the floor.

"And what did you do instead?"

"I… I tried on your shoes."

Merope's mother steepled her fingers. "And why did you do this?"

"I… I don't know. I'm really sorry!"

"_Look at me when I am speaking to you!_" Merope's mother suddenly spat out in Parselmouth, and Merope snapped her head up from where she had been staring at the floor.

"You disgrace! You thief!" Her mother shrieked, pointing her wand at Merope. "Crucio! Crucio! Crucio!" Merope dropped to the floor, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, screaming and screaming as her mother kept on cursing her. With each word a fresh wave of pain swept over her small body. She was dimly aware of blood trickling out of her nose.

Then suddenly, the pain stopped, and Merope was left lying on the floor of her parents' bedroom, curled up, her eyes shut. Her mother left the room to return to her husband and son, happily eating the remains of the chocolate cake.

That was Merope's clearest memory of her mother, apart from her death two years later. She was eight, and Morfin was six. It was late at night and she and her brother were asleep on the lumpy mattress they shared, next to the fire.

Merope was woken up by the latch on the door. She was a light sleeper, and things most people would sleep straight through woke her up. Pulling the blankets closer around her to keep warm, she watched her parents enter the room from outside.

They were laughing together, and Merope could smell the familiar stink of alcohol, especially on her father. "Right in the eyes!" her mother crowed. "Right in his filthy Mudblood eyes!"

"Let's hope they shtay broken!" her father agreed.

Her mother cackled. "For his sake, I hope so! How revolting to have to look in the mirror every day, and see that filthy face!"

Her father stopped. "What? For his sake? Are you mad, woman? Are you shaying you were trying to help him when you got him?"

Her mother slapped him across the face. "Marvolo, you have obviously drunk far too much if you think I would ever do anything to benefit one of them. You know how I despise them. I was being ironic, something that I do not suppose you will ever understand."

Merope's father turned on her mother savagely, and he slipped into Parselmouth. "_How dare you hit me, you mad woman!_" he hissed, taking her by the shoulders and shaking her.

She viciously bared her teeth. "_You are a disgrace to yourself! I would suppose even a filthy Muggle would have a better hold on themselves than you do!_"

Merope's father roared with rage and threw his wife hard onto the stone floor. "Oh, is that the best you can do?" she yelled, her skirts drawn up around her knees. "You pathetic excuse for a wizard –"

"_Avada Kedavra!_" shouted her father, waving his wand clumsily in front of him. There was a flash of green light, and Merope's mother fell still, lying dead on the stone floor.

There was silence. Absolute silence. Merope, lying in the corner, was afraid to breathe in case her father heard her and noticed her.

Shaking slightly, she watched her father slowly sit down at the table, his back to the body of his wife. He took a small bottle from his jacket pocket and swigged it. He put his head in his hands. Then he stood up and went to his bedroom, leaving Merope and the sleeping Morfin alone with their dead mother.

Merope could hardly breathe. The dark room swam before her as her eyes filled with tears. Next to her, Morfin shifted in his sleep. Merope clutched onto him, burying her face in his hair.

Their father didn't emerge the next morning, and Merope began to worry that he had killed himself as well. She was too afraid to go and look in his room. Instead, she picked herself out of the bed and went to make some breakfast. She wasn't tall enough to reach the cupboards, but found some bread on the sideboard, and some dripping in a jar. She found a knife and managed to slice off three uneven chunks of bread, then spread some dripping on each one.

She took two back to the bed and left the other on the sideboard, in the event that her father was still alive and hungry. Morfin had woken up by now and had watched her getting the bread.

"_Thankyou._" he hissed as Merope gave him a slice of bread. Morfin had always found normal speech hard due to a mutation in his tongue, so he always used Parselmouth. If it hadn't been so easy simply to speak in Parselmouth, Merope was sure he could managed to talk normally but a lack of practise meant that Morfin could not communicate with anyone except his family. Not that there was anyone else.

They lived alone for the next two days, Merope always making enough food for three people in case her father was alive, although she was losing hope that he was. She tried not to look at her mother, lying motionless on the floor and starting to smell.

On the third day, Merope's father finally emerged from his bedroom. He looked thin and his eyes were horribly bloodshot. He walked in on his two children eating boiled potatoes together at the table. He looked around madly then cast a questioning look on Merope. She bowed her head and pointed to the sideboard, where the potatoes she had prepared for her father sat.

They lived like this for about a week, Merope clumsily preparing food, standing on chairs in order to reach the cupboards. Her mother still lied on the floor, the smell of decaying flesh becoming more and more poignant by day. Flies were beginning to land on her wide, unseeing eyes.

Eventually Merope realised that her father wasn't going to do anything about it, so she decided, with some revulsion, that it was up to her. Her father was in his room, and Morfin was sitting on their bed watching her. She took hold of her mother's long dark hair and dragged her outside. Morfin watched her drag his mother through the door, the heels of her shoes rubbing against the floor.

The hair Merope was holding suddenly came out in her hand, a whole chunk of hair. Merope gasped in shock, then, blinking back tears, took hold of another chunk until that came out too. Her third handful of hair broke off about a hundred feet from the shack, which Merope decided was far enough. It seemed quite peaceful there, anyway, not too far away from a gently bubbling stream, shaded by trees. She just hoped no filthy, prying Muggles found her.


	2. A Dubious Education

This is probably going to be updated on Fridays, if I can. If you're reading this it would be really nice to know so. Just a simple review to say you're reading it. It's very motivating.

A DUBIOUS EDUCATION

In the next few years Merope's father began to take Morfin with him Muggle-baiting. Her father had the skill to avoid detection from the Ministry.

The first letter Merope had ever recived arrived when she was twelve. Her father took it from her immediately, read it quickly, snorted, screwed it up and threw it away. Hours later, Merope had retrieved the letter.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY 

_Headmaster: Phineas Nigellus_

_Dear Miss Gaunt, _

_We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment._

_Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July._

_Yours sincerely,_

_Armando Dippet_

_Deputy Headmaster_

Merope frowned. The name "Hogwarts" seemed to ring a bell somewhere in her mind. She bit her lip, trying to remember.

Suddenly a hand landed on her shoulder. Merope screamed in shock and wheeled around to find her father.

"Why are you reading that?" he said coldly. Merope didn't answer. "Hogwarts is a stinking, seething mass of Mudbloods. It may have been where Slytherin resided but now it has become something he would weep for. I decided to put neither you or Morfin through such an ordeal. You will both be educated in magic at home."

Merope nodded, letting the parchment fall back into the rubbish.

"However, it seems you will need a wand. The only wandmaker within a realistic distance is Ollivander in London and because he is an incompentant fool, he only opens shop in July and August each year, which is when the Mudbloods scuttle in to get their ill-deserved wands. I would prefer to get yours and Morfin's together, but again the man falls down in that he refused to sell wands to any child under the age of eleven. So soon you will have to accompany me to London.

Merope nodded, and two days later she was watching her father throw green power into the fire. Morfin was sitting on a chair sulking because for once his sister was going somewhere with his father instead of him.

Marvolo grasped Merope's wrist roughly and pulled her into the flames. Merope closed her eyes agaisnt the heat and the ash, and when she opened them again, they were standing in a pub, being gawped at by a mix of people clutching pints.

Merope's father pulled her impatiently through the scattering of tables and stools, but behind her Merope heard whispers.

"_So ugly._" said one. "_Poor, poor girl, having that monster for a father._" said another. She tried to close her ears to them as they commented on her ragged hair, her dirty clothes, her eyes…

"Take no notice of them." her father said when they were outside. "They're all filthy Muggle fanciers."

Merope stared around as they came into the main part of the street. There seemed to be so many children of her age, wearing Muggle clothes, shorts with long socks and thin woollen jumpers on the boys and thin cotton dresses on the girls. She held her breath as they passed her, for fear of breathing in their air. Finally they got to the wandmakers. "Ollivander!" he father shouted as they stepped into the shop. "Get yourself in here!"

A young man scurried into the shop. "I'm, er, sorry sir, my father's out at the moment but if I could be of service…?"

Merope's father scrutinised him. "My daughter needs a wand."

"Um, well, I'm not sure if I'm allowed to sell –"

"My daughter needs a wand! Now! We have travelled far enough, and I demand you test her now!"

"Of… of course, sir. Miss, if you'd just like to come forward…?"

Merope rose from the wooden chair she had sat on. The young man went back to the storeroom and returned with a pile of boxes. He opened one and handed it to Merope, who took it.

After she had stood motionless for a few seconds her father shouted "Well go on, girl, wave it!" Merope jumped and did so. The young man looked at her speculatively.

"No, I don't think so. Try this." he said, handing her another.

Twenty three wands and forty five minutes later, Merope's father was getting increasingly frustrated. "Just find her a damn wand, man!" he shouted at the young man, who looked rather scared of him.

Luckily, the next wand she waved about seemed to do. The young man asked her again and again to keep waving it, scratching his chin. Finally he said "I think that one will suit you." He checked the box. "Ten and a quarter inches, Unicorn tail hair, made of ash. I hope it suits you well." He turned to Merope's father. "Four Galleons please, sir."

"Four Galleons? Daylight robbery…" he grumbled, searching in his leather money bag. The young man was paid in a mixture of dusty Sickles and Knuts, and one single Galleon.

"You had better not waste it," he snapped at her as they walked back along the street, avoiding the Mudbloods. "Four Galleons? I remember my wand was half that…" They had come back to the pub by this time, and the people there stole glances from behind their pints. Marvolo ignored them and threw the green powder into the fire without looking at them, taking Merope with him.

The lessons that followed were spasmodic. Sometimes Merope had lessons every day, other times she went weeks without even one. Marvolo taught no Charms and precious little Herbology. If he was in the mood, Merope was treated to hours of being yelled at as she tried and tried at Transfiguration to no avail, but that happened rarely. Potions had relatively regular times; roughly every week there was a three hour long lesson. Marvolo mostly taught his daughter the Dark Arts.

"At Hogwarts," he said on their very first lesson, "they do not teach students the Dark Arts. They teach defence against it, although Nigellus is trying to pursuade the governers otherwise. This is perhaps the biggest mark of how unbalanced the school is, because nobody can call themselves a witch or wizard, however pureblooded they are, unless they are well versed in the Dark Arts. The Dark Arts represent magic in its purest form; they are an active link back to the dawn of magic when wizardry was about ensnaring living power instead of simply using the dead remains. Of course, it's more dangerous to use living power that can turn on its user, but the results are far stronger."

It all sounded fascinating to Merope, sitting with her face cupped in her hands, gazing up at her father. But then Marvolo said something rather discouraging.

"Of course, you are only an inexperienced twelve year old girl, so I will not be setting you to try to tap into this power until you are at least seventeen. I will merely be teaching you the theory. Don't give me that look! You will be glad of a thorough knowledge of the logistics of the Dark Arts if you ever have control of a living power mass."

But the lessons petered out after a year and a half, when Morfin turned eleven and was instantly whisked off to the wandmakers to get his own wand. Any time Marvolo felt like giving lessons, he called for his son, never his daughter. Merope sometimes hung around the table, hoping to hear some pearls of wisdom, but her father always shooed her away.

"Why don't you learn some decent household spells?" he sneered. "Then perhaps you could make soup that doesn't instantly go cold, as if some filthy Muggle made it!"

So Merope was forced to watch as her brother learned the secrets of the Dark Arts, learned to brew poisons and befuddlement draughts with her father's personal potions kit, learned how to transfigure increasingly complex things, while she had to independantly sneak into her father's room to find the battered old books he owned, which he never read, claiming to know it all already. She would take them outside to where she'd left her mother's body, five years ago, sit on a rock and practise. Practise simple charms and transfiguration, as she couldn't practise potions without ingredients and a potions kit, which her father would surely notice if she took. He also either had no books on the Dark Arts, or had hidden them well.

She could see from what she saw of Morfin's lessons that he found it very difficult. When she came to a particular spell in the book that she remembered him learning, she assumed it would be very difficult, as it had taken him a long time to grasp it. But when she herself did it, she found it actually fairly easy. Morfin complained loudly about the lessons, preferring to learn practically on the regular Muggle-baiting trips. Marvolo was very proud of his son, and encouraged and nurtured his blind hatred. By the time Morfin was thirteen, Merope's hopelessly dependant little brother had gone, replaced by a violent adolescent who scared her almost as much as her father.


	3. An Unhappy Pairing

Fairly short chapter today but it just kind of turned out like that. Later ones will be quite a bit longer so I suppose it all balances out.

As before – if you're reading this please let me know!

AN UNHAPPY PAIRING

Merope was fifteen when she received the gold chained locket. It was a birthday present. At least, her father seemed to think it was her birthday – each year it seemed to be a different day, sometimes even a different month.

She woke from the crate in the corner of the room to see Marvolo looking down at her. She flinched involuntarily, her muscles remembering the times her father had come home in a drunken rage and kicked her into the wall, mumbling things about his dead wife. This time, however, he sat beside her, tenderly drew out a package of brown paper and handed it to her.

She had never received a birthday present before, and so half expected it to contain some nastiness that would burn her, but was too afraid to refuse to open it. Fingers trembling, she undid the grubby string that kept it all together and carefully pulled the paper away, revealing the locket. She looked up at her father in puzzlement. He smiled encouragingly back, so she touched it, somwhat gingerly.

It was cold metal, nothing more, and as soon as she knew this Merope suddenly saw how beautiful it was. She stroked its metallic surface, smiling.

Her father reached to her hands and gently opened the locket, and Merope saw the engraved snake symbol inside.

"Slytherin's." Marvolo said quietly. "I'm trusting you with this. I hope you won't let me down."

Merope nodded, hardly believing that her father trusted her with such a beautiful and precious thing. _"Thankyou." _she whispered in Parseltongue. _"I will not let you down." _

She loved the locket more that anything and wore it around her neck all the time. Sometimes when her father and brother were out of the house she would stand in front of the cracked mirror, comb her dirty, unevenly cut hair from her face and admire her reflection. She could be almost beautiful, she thought, the beautiful heir of Slytherin, with the precious locket to prove it. She could stand for almost an hour, gazing at her reflection before she heard her father or brother coming up the path, and had to lurch away, quickly tucking the locket back inside her clothes and getting into position at the stove as if she had been doing nothing else.

Her father was searching for a suitable husband for her. Of course, there was no question of it being anyone with any – she shuddered at the very thought – Muggle blood. Marvolo had been trying to meet with Syonis Black to discuss the possible marriage of his son Rigel to Merope.

One night, as the three of them sat around the table eating boiled mutton, made by Merope, Marvolo cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable. "Merope, I have met with Black. He… he isn't interested in marrying his son to you. Rigel is apparently courting one of the Melliflua girls. They are engaged."

Merope said nothing, holding a piece of mutton in her mouth.

"Morfin. Malfoy is similarly uninterested in giving you his daughter."

"_I didn't want the dirty slut anyway!_" Morfin hissed violently. Marvolo smiled grimly.

"As you both know, the continuation of our _exquisite_ bloodline is more important than anything. I've decided you will marry each other."

Merope choked on her meat. She would never have admitted it to Marvolo or Mofin, but she had been hoping on the marriage to Rigel Black with all her heart. She had been wishing on every star, had been praying to her locket in the hope that Slytherin would hear her and answer her prayers. She had never met Rigel, but had heard that the house of Black was full of finery and beauty. That they had house elves to do their every whim, that they slept in huge, soft beds with velvet covers. She had been dreaming of being Merope Black, of leaving the hovel where she lived. But it seemed that she would never leave. "Very well." she said, once she had swallowed. "I understand."

Morfin took the news less well. "_She is hideous.You promised me Ilianna Malfoy and now you expect me to take my own sister?_"

"_Crucio._" Marvolo said, his wand pointed at his son. He kept the wand pointing at Morfin for only a fraction of a second before lifting it, but it was a clear message. Morfin fell silent, albeit sulkily. "Ilianna Malfoy has poison blood in comparison with your sister. The Malfoys hide it well but if you go back far enough there's pollutants. You should be glad you aren't going to have her. This way the Slytherin bloodline stays pure. Which is what matters over _everything_."

Morfin glared at his father with loathing, then spat on the floor, wordlessly expressing his disapproval. Merope was staring glassy-eyed into space. A lifetime spent in the hovel, a lifetime spent cooking for and cleaning up after her unappreciative family, a lifetime with her brother, bearing her brother's children…

"I do not think thirteen is old enough for a man to be married, myself." Marvolo said. Merope could hear the tinges of amusement in his voice. "I want Morfin to have at least three more years of happy bachelorhood before he is enslaved."

So Marvolo decided that his children would marry on Morfin's sixteenth birthday, at the beginning of spring. Merope would be eighteen; eighteen and a half, to be exact. Neither bride nor groom was happy about it; Morfin was openly angry about it, throwing his father and sister looks of death. He started to go Muggle-baiting alone, shunning Marvolo's company. Merope internally despaired, clutching onto her locket every night, huddling as far away from Morfin as she could, praying and wishing and praying that somehow Slytherin would see her plight and rescue her in some way. Any way.


	4. A New Day

A NEW DAY

Merope sat cross legged on the stone where she had left her mother, now eight years ago. She had a new book – new in the sense that she hadn't read it before. While cleaning her father's room she had found a book of more complex charms than she had seen before, and was looking forward to trying them out. She had found handwriting on the inside cover. The handwriting was scrawly and almost illegible, and the ink was faded, but after some scrutiny Merope was sure it said _Madeline Gaunt, Hogwarts, sixth year. _She felt surprised that her mother had attended the school, but supposed that it must have been before the Mudbloods had invaded.

"Did you enjoy it there?" she said softly to the surrounding trees and leaf litter. No reply came. Merope often wondered if her mother had actually become a ghost when she died, but had abandoned her family to haunt somewhere happier. She had never seemed very attatched to her family, after all. Still, Merope had read that only people in mental turmoil in the split second before they died become ghosts. Her mother had been shouting at her husband in that moment, and she had always seemed to enjoy that. She had had no idea that in the next second he would kill her. So maybe she had died happy and wasn't a ghost at all.

Charms for invisibility, inaudibility, the complex charms involved for Unplottability and suchlike… Merope flicked through the book in anticipation. She was good at charms.

She started with the charm for peace of mind and relaxation, which she supposed she could do with. _"Addo otium_." she said softly, as the book dictated, making the wand movements explicitly directed in the book.

She felt nothing the first few times she tried it, but after the fourth try her head began to empty. It was a gradual feeling, so subtle that she hardly noticed it. Slowly, the incantation and wand movements began to seem more and more trivial, until finally she let the book and wand fall to the ground and sat basking in the warm summer sun that came trickling through the overhead leaves, the birdsong, the sound of her own heartbeat...

She didn't know how long she sat there, silent and motionless, her eyes closed, breathing evenly and deeply. It might have been a few minutes, it might have been more than an hour.

The charm was beginning to wear off, and a voice cut through. A high, sweet voice, with clear cut pronunciation.

"Oh, Tom! You were right, it is lovely here!"

Merope jumped from her rock, terrified. She quickly snatched her book and wand from the ground and leapt clumsily away from her rock, jumping into a bush. It was a rather prickly bush that left a long bloody scratch down one arm, but she didn't care. Muggles were coming and she didn't want to be detected, in case they touched her. She shuddered at the very thought.

"I thought you'd like it." This voice was male, but not that old. A young man's voice. Merope shifted her position as quietly as she could – several thorns had been pricking her.

The people came into view. There was two of them, both looking as if they were in their late teens. A girl with pale, porceline skin, doll-like features and a lot of gently curled, very light coloured hair, held back from her face with violet hairclips. She wore a thin, blue summer dress that came to just below her knees, and buckled shoes. She was very beautiful, but as Merope knew the dirt that ran in her veins, she felt no jealousy.

Her companion was maybe seven or eight inches taller than her. He had jet black hair that covered his head in thick, shiny curls that caught the light of the sun creeping through the leaves. He was as pale as the girl, a clear indication of wealth. She caught a glimpse of his eyes, and saw they were a clear sky blue color, framed with thick black lashes.

Merope felt a surge of anger bubble up inside her. How dare these subhumans invade her place, the only place she had? The place that was her mother's _grave? _She fingered her wand, considering using the Cruciatus curse on them, but decided not to. She had never used it before, and was scared of it not working.

They sat down on the rock, the girl carefully checking her dress to make sure it didn't catch on a sharp edge. The rock was big enough for two people, but not for two people to sit separately. From her bush, Merope had a fairly good view of them. They both looked rather embarrassed by sitting in such close proximity.

"One thinks that beauty costs money, then one comes to a place such as this and finds that even the lowliest beggar can experience beauty." The girl sighed. "It's so peaceful here..."

The boy – what was his name? Tom? – swallowed. "I agree… Cecilia." He looked nervous. Merope could see him fidgeting with his fingers. She couldn't help herself – she was curious. Why had these people come here?

Cecilia laughed. It reminded Merope of a bubbling waterfall, sweet and tinkling. "What would my father say if he knew I were here, I wonder? Here in the woods, with – oh!"

For Tom had suddenly, without warning, grabbed her hand. Cecilia looked shocked; her cheeks turned a delicate shade of pink and her eyes opened wide. "Why… Tom, I…"

Tom looked down. "I'm… I'm sorry." he said, withdrawing his hand. But Cecilia started to smile, albeit nervously. "No, Tom, I…" And she took his hand in hers.

In her bush, Merope frowned. She could see this Tom wanted the girl very badly. He wanted to have her then and there, on the leaf littered ground. She could see from the way his pupils were dilating, from how his eyes kept guiltily flicking up and down her body, from the way he kept licking his lips. And she didn't seem to have any objection; quite the contrary. Merope didn't understand why they didn't just get on with it.

But they just sat there, on the rock, nervously glancing at least other, giving each other quick smiles. Finally Cecilia said, "I'm so sorry Tom, I could stay here forever, I really could – but I promised my mother I'd be home by four."

Tom nodded, looking rather downcast. Then he said, "Can I see you tomorrow?"

Cecilia broke into a smile. "Of course, Tom! There's… there's nothing I'd like more! Come to my house at two o' clock. I'll meet you by the stables." She rose from the rock, brushing her skirt down.

Tom rose too. "Can I walk you home?"

Cecilia giggled conspiratorially. "Oooh, no! My father might see us together!" She quickly went off through the trees on her own, shooting backward glances at Tom.

He stayed for a few minutes, sitting on the rock, gently stroking the hand that Cecilia had held. Finally he stood up and began walking, slowly, through the trees.

Merope found herself dropping the book on the floor, tucking her wand into the belt on her dress and climbing out of the bush. She followed him, making no noise – a lifetime of trying to remain unnoticed had given her this gift.

She followed him to the edge of the woods. After that she dared not go any furthur. She hid behind a large tree and watched him go down the road, fields on each side, his long black hair catching the sunlight.

Her father and mother were her only other examples of a couple, and as she stirred the soup for that night's dinner, she tried to remember how they had behaved. Not like Tom and Cecilia, that was for sure. When she was seven, Merope had come in with a fresh bucket of water from the well outside and found them naked on the table, her straddling him, him digging his jagged fingernails into her chest and drawing blood as they moved.

But to be fair, they had been married for eight years then. Maybe if Tom and Cecilia got married, they would do that. Maybe Tom would end up killing Cecilia – obviously not with the killing curse but perhaps with a broken bottle or even his bare hands. Maybe that was what marriage inevitably ended in.

She was cold that night. Morfin had taken most of the blankets and she didn't dare retaliate. She lay rubbing her cold arms and legs in the dark, shivering.

Eventually she drifted into a half sleep, half thinking about Tom and Cecilia, half dreaming about them. Tom and Cecilia, sitting on a stone… Tom taking Cecilia's face in his hand… kissing her... kissing Merope… Tom and Merope, sitting on a stone in the woods… Tom, running a hand up Merope's leg…

She snapped her eyes open with a shock to feel a hand on her leg, but not Tom's. This was a hand that had stroked and caressed snakes. Her brother.

She turned her head, frightened, to see Morfin gazing at her in the half light. His other hand came out from under the blankets to stroke her cheek. He looked entranced. She pulled her leg back, pushing to the very edge of the mattress, away from him but he followed her, pressing his body against hers, starting to run his hands over her.

"No, no." she said, barely audible. Morfin stopped, but suddenly gripped her.

"_In two years we will be married. Why wait, my hideous sister?_" Merope whimpered, trying to bat him off but he was persistent, holding her still as he pulled on top of her, his stinking breath in her face.

She tried to turn her face away so she didn't have to look at him but he roughly grabbed her head and held it there, pointing forward so he could see the terror in her eyes. Merope tried to detach herself from it, tried to pretend that she was somewhere else but couldn't, found that she kept being pulled back to that moment, lying in a filthy bed, her brother on top of her, panting. It hurt her but Morfin either didn't notice or didn't care.

Then it finally stopped. Morfin fell back, away from her. Merope lay frozen, hot tears running down her face, not daring to move. Finally she managed to turn her head slightly to look at her brother. He was fast asleep, the moonlight coming through the broken window illuminating his face with its patches of adolescent facial hair, his mouth slightly open.

A lifetime of this, she thought. A lifetime with him.


	5. An Impromptu Encounter

AN IMPROMPTU ENCOUNTER

Merope now spent as much time out of the shack as possible. She came in to quickly prepare meals, then take hers outside to eat it. She was no longer confined to the small clearing where her mother had been left. She wandered further afield, hardly believing that she had wasted sixteen years of her life hanging around the shack and its small garden. All that time she had stayed there, scared that if she ventured into the outside world she would meet Muggles or Mudbloods, that they would somehow pollute her. Now she had been polluted by the most pureblooded of people.

She wished she could sleep outside. Some nights Morfin would content himself with simply touching her, which served as a painful reminder of his power over her. Other times he completely ignored her. And some nights…

She wouldn't think about it in the day. The countryside she explored was too beautiful, too _fresh_ to waste on dark thoughts.

Merope would never, ever admit it to herself, but part of the reason she went out so much, went so far afield, was a hope to see Tom and Cecilia again. Most of the reason, even. She had a suspicion that one of them lived in the big white house that sat on top of the hill, but didn't go there to see because to go there would be admitting she cared.

She wondered how they were getting on with each other. Wondered if they had kissed yet, if Cecilia's father knew about Tom. She hoped Cecilia knew how lucky she was. If only Rigel Black had met her, and loved her, instead of falling for the Melliflua girl!

Merope no longer took the liberty of keeping clean, entertaining the hope that if she stank Morfin would no longer want her next to him. So far this ploy had not worked, but it was the only thing she could realistically try. Once Marvolo had taught his son the bare basics of torture, Morfin had begged and begged to be told more until Marvolo had told him everything he knew, which was a lot. The curse of Cruciatus, though simple to apply, was like being hit over the head with a pillow in comparison with what Morfin could do. Merope did not want to anger him.

At that moment, Merope was lying on a thick tree bough that overhung a dirt track. It was the end of the summer, the leaves on the trees were just beginning to die and everywhere seemed heavy, like the sunlight had become congealed. A niggling voice in her head was telling her it was really time to start heading home.

It had been something of an achievement even to get into the tree. She had been walking along the track and saw it over her head. It was a very thick bough, splitting into two at a point in the centre of the road. She wasn't walking anywhere in particular, so decided to try and get up there. She had had to take her shoes off and tie them by the laces around her neck, as the bottoms were of wood, not rubber and therefore had no grip. She had never climbed a tree before and got stuck quite a few times before finally she got up to the bough. It was worth it, though, when she was up there.

She decided, regretfully, that it really was time to be going. She didn't want to risk the wrath of her family if they found she had not put dinner on the table. Sighing, she began to shift position in order to get out of the tree, then suddenly froze. She had heard the far off clopping of hooves and if she listened carefully, the sound of wheels. A cart was coming!

There was no time to climb out of the tree and Merope didn't want to risk a broken leg by jumping down. Instead she became as still as possible, hugging herself to the wood, hoping to avoid detection.

As the cart came closer, she began to pick out voices.

"Thanks again for giving me a lift, Bob. Are you sure you don't want paying?"

"It's been pleasure enough to have someone to talk to, Master Riddle. How's that Ballingston girl of yours, anyway?"

"Cecilia? Oh… she's fine." Merope noticed his voice somehow became softer as he said her name.

"Grand to hear it. Rumour says you two have plans to marry soon."

Tom laughed. The cart was nearly at Merope's tree now. "I think that's going a bit far. We've only been courting for... what is it? A month and a half, maybe?"

Merope wasn't sure what happened then. Afterwards, she would remember it as her somehow slipping off the bough, it being a happy coincidence that her hand somehow snagged on her shoes as she fell. Anything else would have made her a complete blood traitor and eligible to be expelled from the family. Anyway, something that she couldn't argue with was that for whatever reason, as the cart passed underneath, she left the bough and landed, face down, in a cart full of earthy potatoes.

"Did you hear that?" she heard the man called Bob say, in front of her. Luckily, the potatoes were in a pile that peaked and she had landed behind this peak, effectively hiding her from view.

"It'll be nothing." Tom said. "They're probably just crashing about."

_This is the point where you jump off the back._ a voice in Merope's head was telling her. _Jump off the back and get out of sight. No harm done._ But she didn't move, simply shifted to sit in a more comfortable position. She would have bruises the next day.

"Are you married?" she heard Tom say, at the front.

"Yeah. Fifteen years next month. Six kids and another sprog on the way."

"I hope everything goes smoothly."

"Ah, me too. She's getting on a bit, I tell you. It was hard enough with the last one – but you won't want to hear about that."

"I'm sure I wouldn't."

They fell into silence, making it harder for Merope to be undiscovered. She tried to stay very still as the potatoes bounced around her.

Ten minutes later, the cart pulled to a stop. Merope risked peering over the peak of the potatoes and saw she was at the white house on the hill.

"You'll be wanting to get off here, Master Riddle, unless you want to come on to the kitchens with me."

"I'll get off here. Thanks again for the ride."

"No problem."

They were in the middle of a large, empty driveway. Ahead there was a wall, with a gate. Merope didn't dare get off here for fear of detection. She wished she had obeyed the little voice and jumped off long before.

The cart started moving again. Looking back off the end of the cart Merope saw Tom walking towards the gate. She was afraid he would turn and see her but he didn't. She watched the back of his head intently until the cart went around a bend out of sight.

The cart went past the huge wall and onto a narrow track with bushes on one side and the great, imposing side of the house on the other. Merope took this opportunity to jump off the end; she fell awkwardly but managed to throw herself into the shrubs before the driver turned around to see what had caused the noise.

She wormed her way back into the thicket of trees and rubbed her ankle. She had narrowly avoided twisting it; it quickly came back to normal with just a slight throbbing.

Time to find her way home, she decided, lacing her shoes up. Morfin and Marvolo would be angry enough as it was. She sat for a few seconds to think about where she was as she had never come this far away from home before.

Just as she was about to set off down what was hopefully the right road, Merope heard the sounds of footsteps coming up her path. She froze, peered through the leaves at this new person.

It was Cecilia. She looked even more beautiful than when Merope last saw her. Merope gazed at her, drinking in her perfect features, her flawless skin, her big blue eyes, her long, flowing hair, being gently teased by the breeze. She looked somewhat breathless, nervous, almost guilty, glancing around her. She didn't see Merope, crouched in the bushes.

Merope watched her walk quickly down the path. As she turned round the corner, Merope found herself crawling out of the bushes and walking slowly, awkwardly, hesitantly, guiltily after her.

Cecilia hurried around the side of the house. Merope was forced to keep a long distance behind her as every few seconds Cecilia would look over her shoulder. Finally Cecilia stopped in the garden next to a giant stone chess set, up against the wall of the house. She looked up at a window, then stooped down to pick up a handful of small stones from around the chess set. Merope watched as she drew her arm back and threw the stones at the window. They clattered against the glass and fell down.

Cecilia and Merope waited until the sash window was pushed up and a dark head came out. It was Tom. Merope shrank back, fearing that from his high position he would see her, but he only had eyes for Cecilia.

Cecilia waved her arm in a beckoning motion and Tom nodded. He withdrew his head and the window closed. Merope backed away into the bushes as it was obvious Tom would be coming around shortly. He emerged a few minutes later from a side door just a few feet away from where she was hiding. Merope watched as he went to Cecilia.

Merope felt a strange satisfaction, mixed with bitterness, as they kissed. She couldn't hear what they were saying, but they both looked so happy, so radiant, so in love.

She wished Tom loved her instead of Cecilia.

As soon as this thought came into her head she squashed it. It made her feel slightly ill that she had even thought it. He was a Muggle. A dirt veined Muggle. It would be like loving some base animal. Even Morfin was a thousand times better than Tom.

Merope closed her eyes to block Tom out. It was getting dark. Morfin and Marvolo would be furious with her when she finally got back. But it was impossible to crawl out of her bush and try to head home without Tom and Cecilia seeing her. She waited, trying to not to watch as Tom stroked Cecilia's hair as they sat on a bench together.

She waited for them to go but they didn't. It got steadily darker and darker until Merope thought that perhaps it was dark enough for her to sneak out without them seeing. She really had to get home.

As far as she could see, they weren't moving. Perhaps they had fallen asleep. Finally she dared to crawl out of the leaves and away.

"Tom!" Cecilia's voice suddenly rang out. "What was that noise?"

Merope froze as Tom replied. "I don't know. It won't be anything to worry about."

"Do you have wild animals here?"

"Of course not, darling. But if you're really worried I'll go and have a look." Merope heard him get up and start to walk towards her. Scrambling to her feet, Merope ran, in full view. In the dark he shouldn't have been able to see the finer details of her.

"Stop!" he yelled out, once he'd realised it was a person. "Come back! Thief!"

He was a faster runner than her and, glancing over her shoulder, Merope saw that he was gaining on her. However, once he had chased her out of the gates he slowed and turned back. Merope stood in the shadows of the trees, watching him retreat. She was a long way from home and it took her another hour to find her way through the maze of country lanes back to the cottage.

She pushed open the door and was instantly met by a savage punch to the head. She sank to the floor, brown swirls clouding her vision.

"Where have you been?" Marvolo said quietly from a chair on the other side of the room. Merope looked up, her head throbbing.

"I got lost." she croaked.

"_Can I beat her?_" Morfin hissed. Marvolo considered, then shook his head.

"No, I would prefer food to a broken daughter." Morfin growled, but didn't move. Merope nodded, rose up and walked unsteadily to the stove.

That night with Morfin was the worst yet.


	6. An Unpleasant Confrontation

AN UNPLEASANT CONFRONTATION

Merope still spent a lot of time outside to get away from her family, but now she roamed the fields and woods rather than the roads and lanes. She wanted to minimise the chances of seeing Tom and Cecilia.

Whenever she thought of Tom it was hand in hand with a feeling of self loathing and disgust. She couldn't believe that, even if it was just for a split second, she had wanted to take Cecilia's place. To be touched by Tom's filthy, animal hands…

But it seemed that Tom had somehow acquired his own steed. She had seen him several times riding a big brown horse on the road next to their home, sometimes alone, sometimes with Cecilia on a pretty white mare. Gradually, she found herself staying at home more and more during the day. Found her eyes quickly flitting to the cracked window whenever she heard a horse coming just in case it was him. Marvolo and Morfin never seemed to notice the way her head shot up from whatever she was doing when they heard the hooves outside.

The weeks and months trickled by until one day Merope finally admitted to herself that she was in love with Tom Riddle. It was a huge relief, a gigantic release of pressure. She lost most of the horrible feelings of self loathing – they were replaced with feelings of loathing for Cecilia, which was a lot easier to deal with. She was still afraid of her family noticing, but now felt no shame to herself when she stared out of the window at him. It was far too late for that.

Autumn came and went, and Merope decided she was now eighteen. Her life seemed to have fallen back into a balance. Miserable, but at least balanced and predictable. Only half a year left before her marriage to her brother became official.

It was a day when her father and brother had gone out, leaving her alone in the house. Merope had been sitting in a rocking chair, sewing up rips from brambles in her dress when she heard the familiar clattering of hooves. There was nobody else in the house. Shamelessly she leapt up, pulled the window open and leaned out of the window to take in as much of him as she could, to scrutinise every inch of him so she wouldn't forget it while waiting for him to ride past again, a look of complete and utter adoration plastered all over her face.

"_Like him, do you?_" she heard her brother hiss from behind her. She started, turned around in horror to see Morfin advancing on her.

"Like… who?" she managed to say. "I'd just dropped something out of the window, I was getting it back…" She trailed off.

"_There's no point lying._" Morfin hissed, coming closer. "_I saw you. But it doesn't matter. You're my wife now._" He suddenly reached out and pulled her close to him, pressing her face against his. His teeth jarred against her lip, making it bleed.

He did nothing more after that and Merope almost thought he had forgotten. Then a few days later Marvolo went to London, leaving his children alone.

Merope awoke one cold winter morning to Morfin dragging Tom into the shack. Her heart leapt into her throat. Tom's face was covered in painful looking hives and he looked near delirious. For the first time ever he looked directly at Merope. "What's going on?" he whispered.

"_Doesn't look so pretty now, does he?_" Morfin hissed. He kicked Tom savagely. "_Come on then, my sister, aren't you going to give him a kiss?_"

Merope shook her head, trembling. Morfin spat in Tom's hair. "_Come on, you diseased monkey. My sister doesn't want you any more._" He dragged Tom back out of the shack. Merope watched through the window as her brother pulled Tom by the hair into the stream near the house and threw him into it. She wondered why Tom didn't try to fight back, then realised Morfin had immobilised his limbs.

She waited until Morfin had finished kicking him and hurried down to the stream. Her brother had left Tom on his back in the water. It wasn't deep enough to drown him and most of his head, now a bloody red mess, remained above the water. His face contorted in fear as he saw her peering at him.

Merope left him. He would be all right. Morfin wasn't a strong wizard, the spells holding his limbs would wear off fairly soon. She left it a few hours and then returned to the stream to find him gone. The less involved she was with this, the better. If she touched him, Morfin would get angry.

The next day Marvolo returned. Neither of his children said anything about what had happened, until later that day. Merope had been cooking dinner on the stove when she heard Morfin hissing violently at someone. She looked out of the window and saw a man dressed in bizarre clothes. He didn't seem to understand what Morfin was saying.

Marvolo followed her gaze and cursed, throwing his book down and storming out of the cottage. She heard her father trying to get rid of this new man, who seemed to be from the Ministry.

Marvolo ordered his son into the house, which Morfin did. "_Interfering Mudblood."_ he hissed as he came in to Merope, stirring some soup on the stove.

They listened to their father and the other wizard arguing. It seemed the wizard had come about Morfin attacking Tom. Merope felt secretly glad.

"Come in the bleeding house, and much good it'll do you!" she heard her father say, and quickly turned back around to the stove as Marvolo came in with this wizard.

She felt eyes on her back, and turned around slightly. The wizard was looking at her. "M'daughter, Merope." her father said.

"Good morning." said the wizard, but Merope didn't want to associate herself with him in front of her father, so simply turned back around to the stove. She didn't want this unfriendly meeting to involve her.

"Well, Mr Gaunt," said the man from the Ministry, "to get straight to the point, we have reason to believe that your son Morfin performed magic in front of a Muggle late last night."

Something inside Merope froze, and the pan she was holding slipped out of her hand. She had thought all that unpleasant business was over and buried. Digging it back up could provoke Morfin into saying something she had been banking on him not doing…

"_Pick it up!_" her father yelled. Merope dropped to the floor, groping for the pan but still he shouted at her. "That's it, grub on the floor like some filthy Muggle, what's your wand for, you useless sack of muck?" Merope leapt up, drawing her wand, muttered an incantation. In her haste she overstressed one of the syllables and instead of the pot rising gracefully into her hand it shot across the room and shattered against the wall. Her brother cackled in delight. Her father roared with rage. "Mend it, you pointless lump, mend it!"

Merope could tell he was tense, worried about this Ministry wizard but trying to hide it. She tried to retrieve the pot from the floor but the Ministry wizard mended it for her. She internally winced – there would be hell to pay later.

Her father was furious. "Lucky the nice man from the Ministry's here, isn't it? Perhaps he'll take you off my hands, perhaps he doesn't mind dirty Squibs!"

_Morfin is more Squib than me, _she thought bitterly as she put the pot back in its cupboard. She stood quietly against the wall, trying not to move, listening to the others.

Morfin was summoned to a hearing at the Ministry. Merope wanted to leave more and more as her father became more and more agitated, her brother became more and more delirious, his eyes rolling up into his skull, giggling in a strange, high pitched voice…

Her father was trying to intimidate the Ministry wizard with pureblood banter. It wasn't working. She had been surprised that what Morfin had done was a crime but as it was, it followed that blood wasn't going to have much effect here.

"Your son had committed –" the Ministry wizard began, but Merope saw something inside her father snap. She had seen it too many times before, when he was pushed just that bit too far.

He lurched towards her and dragged her by her chain to the Ministry wizard, pushing the locket into his face. "See this?" he demanded. Merope gasped for breath, starting to panic.

"I see it, I see it!" snapped the Ministry wizard.

"_Slytherin's!_" yelled her father. "Salazar Slytherin's! We're his last living descendants, what do you say to that, eh?" He let go of Merope and seemed to forget about her instantly. She staggered, rasping, over to the window, thinking that if her father should be provoked again she could make a hasty escape; the door was directly next to the window.

She listened to them arguing for a few more minutes. It seemed that the Ministry wizard would not listen to her father's objections. Morfin would be going to a hearing, then possibly to Azkaban. She wasn't sure if she was glad or not – she wouldn't miss Morfin much, but living solely with her father didn't seem much better.

It was then, at the worst possible time, that Merope heard the familiar sounds of horses coming along the track. Two horses. She couldn't help glancing behind her, through the window – it was a reflex that had become too deeply ingrained.

"My God, what an eyesore! Couldn't your father have that hovel cleared?" Cecilia. Merope had grown to hate that cut-glass voice, but before she could dwell on it Tom's voice filtered through the window.

"It's not ours. Everything on the other side of the valley belongs to us, but that cottage belongs to an old tramp called Gaunt and his children." Marvolo bared his teeth at being called a tramp, but Merope hardly noticed. "The son's quite mad, you should hear some of the stories they tell in the village."

Cecilia laughed. Merope realised that Tom didn't remember being attacked, or he wouldn't have dared ride past the cottage. The Ministry had to have fixed that too. Morfin fidgeted but Marvolo ordered him to stay still.

"Tom… I might be wrong, but has someone nailed a snake to that door?" Cecilia again, sounding slightly amused.

"Good Lord, you're right! That'll be the son, I told you he's not right in the head. Don't look at it, Cecilia, darling." Tom sounded slightly shocked. The sounds of the horses began to grow fainter – they had passed the cottage.

Morfin shot a look at Merope and somehow she knew what was coming. She felt sick with apprehension, but couldn't bring herself to move. The blood drained from her face.

"_Darling. Darling, he called her. So he wouldn't have you anyway._" Morfin whispered, each word laced with exquisite pleasure.

The bomb had been dropped.

"_What's that?_" her father hissed, his eyes moving quickly from Merope to Morfin. "_What did you say, Morfin?_"

"_She likes looking at that Muggle. Always in the garden when he passes, peering through the hedge at him, isn't she?_" Merope shook her head violently, silently begging but Morfin carried on regardless. "_And last night… hanging out of the window waiting for him to ride home, wasn't she?_"

She didn't look at her father but he spoke anyway. "_Hanging out of the window to look at a Muggle? Is it true?_" He moved slowly towards her. She could see the cold anger in his eyes. "_My daughter – pureblooded descendant of Salazar Slytherin – hankering after a filthy, dirt-veined Muggle?_"

Merope shook her head frantically, backing away until she was pressed up against the window.

"_But I got him, Father! I got him as he went by, and he didn't look so pretty with hives all over him, did he, Merope?_"

Marvolo looked wildly from Merope to Morfin then back to Merope then launched himself at his daughter, clutching his hands around her throat. "_You disgusting little Squib, you filthy little blood traitor!_" he roared and to Merope his voice seemed louder and more frightening than it had ever been before. She was sure she was going to die – Marvolo had killed her mother for much less than this. She closed her eyes, wanting to imagine Tom in her last moments.

Then from somewhere far away someone yelled "_Relashio!_" and the hands were ripped from her throat. Her eyes snapped open to see her father thrown backwards into a chair. She turned to see her brother running haphazardly at the Ministry wizard, wand and knife drawn. The Ministry wizard seemed to realise that he was no match for a highly-strung Morfin and ran from the cottage.

Marvolo stared at her from the floor and started to get up but Merope didn't stay until he had done so. Pushing roughly past Morfin in the door way she ran away from the cottage blindly, not knowing where she was running to or what she was going to do. It was twilight, and soon would be dark.

Eventually Merope came to a stop and realised she was standing in the middle of a field. She had no idea where she was. She wandered aimlessly for a few hours before crawling into a hollow at the base of a tree and falling asleep. Millipedes and woodlice crawled over her, wriggling in her hair and under her clothes but she didn't dare come out in case her family had somehow tracked her down.


	7. Alone

ALONE

The next day an owl came to her tree with a letter addressed to her. At first she was afraid to open it, then thought that it was unlikely her family would have thought of sending her a cursed letter. She tore it open and read it.

Dear Miss Gaunt 

_We are regretful to inform you that Marvolo Gaunt has been sentenced to six (6) months in Azkaban for assaulting four Ministry officials on 28th November 1925. We are also regretful to inform you that Morfin Gaunt has been sentenced to three (3) years in Azkaban for an unprovoked attack on a Muggle and for assaulting three Ministry officials._

_The Department of Magical Law Enforcement_

_The Ministry of Magic_

After reading this Merope sat for perhaps an hour or more, contemplating. For the first time in her life she was alone, whether she liked it or not. Her father would return in six months but Morfin was in Azkaban for three years. She would be twenty one. The marriage would be delayed. She wondered if the Dementors would make him remember what he did to her.

Merope did not return to the cottage until that evening. Up until when she stepped through the door she had nursed a niggling fear that it was all a trick and they would be waiting for her but the house was empty. There were signs of a struggle. The old, battered sofa had been turned onto its back and there was blood on the walls. But no Marvolo, and no Morfin. She slowly walked through the house, jumping every time a floorboard creaked. Alone.

Merope lit the stove and made herself some boiled potatoes. She made far too much, enough for three instead of one and scolded herself for not remembering. For once she ate the best ones, the ones that were actually cooked all the way through. Ordinarily they would have gone to her father and brother.

That night it rained heavily and Merope ran out with bare feet to let the rain run through her hair and over her skin. She was completely soaked within a minute but stayed outside, screaming and yelling at the top of her voice until she began to shake violently with cold. It represented her freedom.

She had influenza for a week after. She ransacked her father's room, taking all the books she could find and then reading them in bed with a mug of her mother's special tea, which Madeline had made all those years ago from various herbs when someone got ill.

Finally having the time to practise incantations at her own leisure, Merope threw herself into learning as much as she could. As far as she knew, she would never have such an opportunity again. She lay in bed, levitating pots and pans from the worktop.

It took her a while to summon up the courage to start with potions. Apart from the few lessons she'd had when she was eleven, she'd never had any prior practise in it. She had always been too afraid that her father would notice things going from the few supplies he kept under his bed.

She looked through the ingredients he did have, then flicked through the book that seemed to have the simplest potions in. The ingredients for the swelling solution were simple – mostly plants that she could pick from the surrounding area anyway. It did need two puffer-fish eyes to a pint, but her father seemed to have a lot of these dried eyes anyway.

Sitting with all the ingredients painstakingly cut and measured out, Merope took a deep breath and began. It was simple enough if you concentrated. Unlike wand magic, you just had to make sure you followed the instructions and if you did you could fall into a kind of trance where the bubbling, thick liquid was everything. The whole world could have ended, and Merope would have simply sat gazing into her cauldron, inhaling the heady vapours until the house collapsed, slowly stirring, this many times clockwise, this many anticlockwise.

Then it was done. The consistency suddenly stopped being syrupy and became as thin as water. As the book instructed, Merope quickly took the cauldron from the flames and plunged it into the waiting bowl of cold river water. The sudden change in temperature would freeze the properties of the potion at their most desirable, the book said.

Merope got a carrot from the kitchen and carefully dripped a little of the potion onto it. The liquid rapidly soaked into the vegetable. Nothing happened for a few seconds then suddenly the carrot's surface began to bloat, as if it was a balloon being blown up. Cracks appeared in the skin, before quickly fusing over.

The carrot was now a bizarre shape, as the potion had only gone on a few parts of it. It now appeared to be covered in lumps. Merope gingerly bit off one of these lumps and chewed it. It tasted exactly the same, although the consistency was a little different.

Her first potion had been a complete success. Eager to do more, Merope found another potion with simple ingredients. This one was a cure for warts and boils and was mostly made from dried nettles, which there was a good supply of just outside the cottage. After decanting the swelling solution into some old glass bottles, taken from the midden a little way from the cottage, and scrubbing the cauldron free of the solution, Merope set to work for the second time. Her feet and hands were rife with warts so she had plenty to practise on. She tried with one on her thumb. The potion stung a little with a burning sensation and as it soaked into her skin it felt a little like a hot needle, but the book had said that would happen, so it was OK. There was a fizzing sound and Merope saw the wart dissolving before her eyes, exposing the flesh underneath. This remained exposed for a few seconds before the skin fused over, leaving her thumb as good as new.

Over the next few days, Merope did more until she started to run out of potions with easy ingredients. Her father had not been a potioneer and there now seemed to be no potions left that she already had all the ingredients for.

She thought back to when she was eleven, getting her wand in Diagon Alley. She was sure there had been an apothecary there. She thought about it, chewing on her lip. Her father had used the green powder. And there were other times he had travelled through the fire, saying the name of some place before he stepped into the flames.

The next day, Merope went carefully through her mothers wardrobe. Her father hadn't touched it for years, so she was safe picking things out, if uncomfortable. She had never opened the wardrobe since she was five. Mostly the clothes smelled musty but there still remained a hint of her mother on them. Merope tried to assure herself that her mother wasn't a ghost and wouldn't suddenly rise from the floor and scold her. Surely if she had been a ghost she would have made an appearance by now.

None of the clothes were moth eaten, which was a blessing. Merope found a dress that fitted her fairly well, and shoes. The same shoes she had tried on, thirteen years ago, but she tried not to think about that. She knew her appearance would count for a lot. If she looked too desperate, she was guaranteed to get ripped off.

She hung the dress outside the cottage to air it, and went down to the stream to wash the filth from her own body. She knew she stank. She hadn't washed since Morfin started to touch her and dirt and sweat and grease had built up all over her.

Finally Merope sharpened a kitchen knife as much as she could, and combed her hair through. She hadn't done this for a long time and a lot of it was pulled out. It was painful, but finally her hair hung down fairly smoothly rather than just sticking up. It was a lot longer than she had thought. With the knife, she cut it into as straight a line she could at the bottom, evening it out afterwards by biting bits off.

Her locket sat much better against the finery of her mother's dress than her own ragged one. The beautiful heir of Slytherin was ready to face the world. Merope gathered all the rest of her mother's jewellery into a bag and took a handful of the green powder and threw it into the flames.

"Diagon Alley." she said as clearly as she could with the smoke in her throat. The dizzy, spinning sensation was exactly the same. A few seconds of nausea and coughing and it was over and she'd fallen out of another fireplace miles away.

The pub was exactly the same as she remembered it too, but now she attracted much less attention. A few people glanced over to her but then turned back to their pints. Merope picked herself up and walked with as much dignity as she could, out.

The brick wall stumped her. She remembered her father tapping a combination of bricks with his wand and the wall opening. But she had no hope of remembering what the combination was.

She stood for a while, thinking, before two young witches came gossiping from the pub. One tapped the brick wall too quickly for Merope to see. She discreetly followed them through when it opened.

A faded sign above a shop advertised Slug & Jiggers Apothecary. There was a few people inside, so Merope pushed the door open to get an idea of the prices of things. She worked out she would need two galleons and ten sickles to get everything she needed, in the short term anyway. The apothecary watched her as she left the shop.

Merope wandered down Diagon Alley, looking for somewhere to sell her jewellery. There seemed to nowhere, and she began to feel slightly desperate. Walking back down, she came across a little alley she hadn't seen before.

In this new alley, she came across Borgin and Burkes. This seemed the most promising so, with as much confidence as she could muster, Merope walked up to the counter.

"I have something to sell."

The man behind the counter glanced around at her than turned back to whatever he was doing. "Just a second."

"Come here now or I leave. And I promise, you don't want me to do that." Inside she felt sick. There was a huge chance her mother's jewellery was just cheap tack, and the man would laugh at her when he saw it. But all she would lose from that would be her pride. What she had could be worth a lot, and she couldn't afford not to get a fair price for it.

The man turned around. "OK, what have you got?"

Merope drew the jewellery from her bag carefully, one by one. "What can you give me for this?"

The man picked them up one by one. She could tell he was interested, although he was trying to remain offhand. "Why are you selling it?"

"Oh, you know. It's cluttering up the house. Has a few too many bad memories."

"Ah." the man winked. "Gotcha. _Cluttering up the house_. I get your drift."

Merope smiled. He might understand, but she certainly didn't.

"Well… I suppose three galleons, though that's pushing it a bit."

She had no idea if that was a reasonable offer or not, but assumed it wasn't. "Don't be ridiculous. I know how much this is worth. I hope you know what this is?"

He nodded slowly. "Yes. Yes, I know. Six."

"Twelve. But only because I'm in a hurry to get rid of this."

The man sighed. "Deal."

Merope could hardly believe it. She had expected him to haggle it down to about seven. Maybe twelve wasn't reasonable, but she could hardly change now. The man counted out twelve galleons and handed it to her.

"Pleasure doing business with you." he called out as she left the shop. There was a hint of a snigger in his voice. Merope was suddenly sure the jewellery had been worth far more than twelve galleons. Still, twelve was more than enough to get the ingredients she needed. Her bag now filled with paper bags and loose money, Merope waited for someone to let her though back into the Leaky Cauldron and then used the fire there to take her back to the cottage, hugging her purchases to her chest. She arranged all the strange herbs and bones and claws into separate jars, carefully labelled, with a final jar with the rest of the money.

The day, she decided, had been an overwhelming success.


	8. Hunting For A New Life

HUNTING FOR A NEW LIFE

From swelling solutions to shrinking potions, Merope moved forwards with her potions as fast as she could. She found it easy and enjoyed it immensely, knowing that for once, she was actually _good_ at something. It was lovely to think of all the witches and wizards who simply moved paperwork around, who could never make a shrinking potion if they were pushed to try. She had a lot of fun with the rats in the cottage, holding them, desperately squeaking, as she dripped small quantities of it into their mouths, then timing how long it took them to revert back to their normal size The book said it was supposed to last an average of an hour and a half – Merope's went to two hours and twenty minutes. She still glanced towards the window when she heard the clattering of hooves outside but there was no more shuddering feeling of desperation. She still lived him, but now she had found a new love – he was not her everything any more.

She moved onto the Invigoration Draught, which the book said had to be brewed in a room devoid of light. The new moon was luckily only a day away, so Merope waited until then, hanging the bedspread in her father's room over the window. She had to brew the potion without ever seeing what she was doing, getting by by making sure she knew exactly where each ingredient was, and memorising each instruction so she didn't have to look at the book. The Invigoration Draught proved very useful – she just had to drink a little to completely fire her up, keeping her working through the nights with little to no sleep. She knew relying on the potion like this, saturating her bloodstream with it, was completely wrecking her body, often finding herself twitching uncontrollably and sometimes having daylight hallucinations. Plus, with using the draught so much she was beginning to develop a tolerance to it, meaning she had to take more and more. But sending herself slightly mad from lack of sleep and some overdosing seemed a small price to pay for extra time. Every second was precious and how she did in these few months would determine the rest of her life.

In the minutes spent cooking and eating, Merope entertained fantasies of herself getting away from the cottage and to London – everyone would be amazed at how a poor girl of eighteen managed to develop the potions skills of a master potioneer. And she would become rich and successful and beautiful, and then she would come back to Little Hangleton and find Tom and he wouldn't recognise her as the tramp's daughter, but a lovely young woman. And of course he would ask her to marry him and wouldn't mind in the slightest that she was a witch. They would each live their own lives, him as a Muggle and her as a witch but their love for each other would never waver. And they would live happily ever after, with children who would cross the discriminatory barrier and help to heal the muggle/wizard rift.

Of course, she knew it was a ridiculous notion. Even though she was good at potions, she was sure there were many, many others who were the true masters of it, who would look at her proudest accomplishments with scorn. And she would never be beautiful, not with even the most expensive cosmetic treatment, and Tom would never look twice at her, even if he knew that she was successful in a world he was oblivious to. But surely there was a place for, perhaps, an apprentice, one with natural talent and an eagerness to learn. Tom was not a part of this, more realistic fantasy but she felt that she would rather say goodbye to Tom than remain in the cottage when Marvolo returned. Becoming good at something was her ticket out.

It was three months after Marvolo and Morfin had been convicted that she picked up the most advanced book for the second time. The lucky potion instantly drew her attention and she tried to brew it once before realising that this was truly a difficult potion, one where split-second timing and mental connection were key, things that needed experience to achieve. She didn't dare try her dubious attempt as the books said that an incorrectly brewed Felix Felicis would give the drinker only bad luck, and Merope felt she'd had enough of that already.

So she looked through the book to find another to work on. In comparison with Felix Felicis, the potion to induce Euphoria was simple in practise. She spent a happy three hours dancing and singing around the garden, before the effects wore off and she found herself completely sapped of energy and cursing herself for the time she had wasted. Then came a bigger blow – the rats had somehow got into her ingredient supplies and eaten a lot of them. Most of the ingredients were poisonous in some way – formulating them together in a potion made them counteract each other to make them harmless – and the rats lay dead on the shelf and the floor. She threw them away and got herself ready for a second inevitable trip to Diagon Alley, luckily still having money from her last trip.

Falling into the fireplace in the pub, Merope realised this would be a good time to enquire about apprenticeships. Looking around, the few people there seemed huddled in tight groups around the table and it seemed silly to ask them. Instead, Merope went to the bar and ordered a firewhisky. She had been drinking it since she was four – with half a pint she might as well have been drinking water.

She chatted to the barman, who introduced himself as Nick. Having nothing better to do than wipe glasses, he seemed happy to talk to her. Merope told him about how she had just finished her NEWTS and was looking for anyone who might train her further in the area of Potions.

"As a matter of fact, I _do_ know of someone who might be thinking of taking on an apprentice." Nick said. "Bloke named Yaxley, works with the Ministry. Tell you what, give me your name and address and I'll drop you an owl if I hear anything more about it."

She told him her name and address, unconsciously lowering her voice. He frowned. His manner seemed to change from friendliness to suspicion. "You're one of the Gaunts? I thought they didn't send their kids to Hogwarts."

"Well, you thought wrong, didn't you." Merope said tersely.

"Right. What grade did you get in your Potion NEWT? Yaxley would only take the best."

She had never known the grading system, did not even know what Nick meant. "Oh, I did very well."

"But what actual grade? O, E, A? What is it?"

Merope thought quickly. A was at the beginning of the alphabet, so it followed that it was the top grade. "A."

"Only an A? You'd be lucky with that. But then again, Potions seems to be falling out of fashion as a NEWT subject. He may not be able to find anyone else."

Merope drained her glass, thanked him, and left the shop. It seemed the apothecary's prices had risen slightly since she had been there before, but she still had enough money to replenish her supplies, and get more exotic items, like Boomslang skin that she would need for Polyjuice. This cost her a painful whole galleon, but she told herself it was worth it.

Now all she could do was wait for an owl that probably wasn't coming, and push herself forwards as much as possible. At three in the morning, Merope sat on the floor with a candle leafing through the book, every half hour taking another mouthful of Invigoration Draught. She noticed, the realisation hitting her like a punch in the stomach, that she was only a few pages away from Amortentia.


	9. Revelations

Late, I know but I've had a crazy weekend, went to see Radiohead (wowz) and also was obligated to go to a prom, around revision, so yeah, it's been a bit hectic.

REVELATIONS

Amortentia. She carefully read through it, telling herself that her interest in it was entirely professional. Anyway, she told herself, it needed Ashwinder eggs. She'd seen a jar of them in the Apothecary, priced at ten sickles an egg. She had tried to get a closer look at them but as soon as her hands got within about an inch of the glass it had sprouted teeth and snapped at her. In short, she couldn't afford it. Couldn't afford to brew it for _practise_, she corrected herself. It also needed one gill of adder venom and eight midnight-gathered belladonna leaves to a pint, which seemed like an awful lot of poison. It also took three and a half days to brew, at all time being closely attended. Usually, the book said, it would require two highly skilled potioneers to brew a successful potion, working in shifts.

No, Merope decided, she would not be attempting Amortentia. Flipping back to the Polyjuice, she realised that she had misread the instructions before. She had thought it had said that the lacewing flies had to be brewed for 21 hours; in fact it was 21 _days_. Still, that would give her enough time.

There was two and a half months now before Marvolo would return and she wanted to be gone in good time, even with no promise of a place to go. She would sleep rough if she had to. She'd done it before, it hadn't been all that bad and she could take a cover. She would be all right, until she worked out a master plan. If nothing happened up until fifteen days before Marvolo returned, she would leave and live under a tree.

Still, until that day she still had work to do. She might be safe outside but it would be painfully difficult to brew anything there, and she wouldn't be able to get to Diagon Alley for more ingredients. Her time in the cottage was still precious.

As the lacewing flies slowly bubbled, Merope turned to the next thing on her list, which was the Draught of Living Death. This could not be tried on the rats, as the book specified that the potion only worked on humans, as it specifically targeted a part of the brain that only humans had. She was a little worried about it – it sent the drinker into a deep sleep from which they would not wake for any length of time depending on the strength of the potion, the size of the person and other, unpredictable factors. They went cold, stopped breathing, stopped having a pulse. No, she wasn't looking forward to it.

It took five days to brew, but could be left for hours at a time, so she could sleep. She slept for three hours at a time next to the bubbling cauldron, the sound of it lulling her to sleep and then waking her up again. Finally it was done and she held a spoonful of it in her hand, sitting on her bed, ready to fall back. She would have wanted to take only a few drops to see the effects first, but the book said that to take too little was as dangerous as taking too much – the potion had to both shut the body down and also freeze the brain. If too little was administrated, the body would shut down but the brain would not be frozen, and, deprived of oxygen, would quickly die. The spoonful, in accordance to her body weight, should knock her out for six hours but so much of it also depended on other, unpredictable things such as the temperature of the surrounding area, the age and sex of the person, the different hormones and concentration of water in the bloodstream. Merope pushed the metal into her mouth and swallowed with the horrible niggling fear that she would never wake up. But if she couldn't trust in her abilities, who would?

Instant fogginess. A terrible wave of blackness came over her eyes and Merope quickly shut them, realising that if they were open when she was out they would stay as such and dry up. Her joints suddenly felt as if they were filled with tar and her bones were made of lead and even to twitch one finger was exhausting. Even trying to breathe in was impossible, as if there was a tonne of stone on her chest. Her last thought was that it had been a bad idea.

She woke up what felt like a few seconds later, not remembering anything. Her eyes seemed fused together and it took some effort to open them. Slowly touching her skin, she found it was as cold as ice. Her limbs were completely numb and her lungs hurt with every tiny breath she took. After a few minutes, she had agonising pins and needles all over her body.

Relief swept over her that she had indeed woken up. After an hour and a half, by which time she had recovered, she went outside, every smell and sight and sound seeming somehow better than they ever had before.

She found herself going down the road into Little Hangleton. It was raining heavily, so she didn't expect to meet many people. She passed two people, heads bent against the rain, who didn't even seem to see her. Looking at all the houses, Merope wondered how they could bear living so squashed together. It all seemed so strange, so alien. Trying to understand these people better, she wandered over to the deserted noticeboard and read the village notices.

There was to be a big village party in the Hanged Man on Shrove Tuesday. Someone called Doris Meadows was looking for a reliable farmworker and someone called Harris Bishop was selling a horse called David. Then one ornate slip of paper drew her attention in the bottom corner of the board.

The marriage of Thomas William Riddle to Cecilia Sophie Ballingston shall commence– 

Merope shut her eyes quickly. The world seemed suddenly deafeningly quiet and sickening feelings of shock welling up inside her, making her catch her breath and clench her teeth, and then they were gone, leaving her empty.

She opened her eyes. It was a mistake. It had to be. She had read half of the notice and if she just read the rest it would turn out that she had jumped to the worst conclusions.

The marriage of Thomas William Riddle to Cecilia Sophie Ballingston shall commence in St Mary's Chapel at 12 noon on the fifteenth of March, 1926. All are invited.

Merope stood bleakly staring at the notice for a few minutes. Somehow the longer she looked at it the worse it got. The first initial shock was nothing to this feeling of numbness, chewing her up from the inside.

The rain grew heavier, huge drops of water running over her face, collecting on her eyelashes and dripping off the end of her nose, running down the back of her neck, soaking into the holes in her shoes and making her socks damp. She didn't cry, although somehow curling up in a corner wailing until there was a painful ache in her throat would have been preferable to walking, dazed, through the streets back up to the cottage. The rain seemed to get louder and louder until it was almost deafening.

A month and five days before Tom and Cecilia were forever tied together. A lifetime with each other. Babies, children, middle age, grandchildren, death and twin graves.

She was meant to be moving onto the Ageing potion the next day. All the ingredients were laid out for it, painstakingly measured and cut. A key ingredient, the leopard flower petals, had to be exposed to oxygen for twelve hours after being cut but after that quickly rotted. The potion had to be done then.

It was a disaster. It was impossible to settle into the concentrative state of mind required. At a critical moment the image of Tom lifting the veil on Cecilia's face slid into her mind and her hands shook and things got added wrongly and she either stirred it too much, or too little and her fire kept going out and instead of a clear, waterlike substance there was a brown viscous liquid that stank of chlorine. She tried it on a rat. It died.

She hated Tom at times like this. If he didn't exist she would be happily getting on with it, leaving Little Hangleton with nothing to keep her there. Except, she reminded herself, if Tom didn't exist then her family would never have been incarcerated and she would probably be skinning rabbits. Tom wasn't supposed to be part of her master plan anyway. She was supposed to leave Little Hangleton, alone, and never see him again, keeping a soft spot in her heart for him but apart from that not looking back, only looking forwards. It wasn't supposed to hurt so much.

Days slipped by, then a week. Two weeks. She did nothing. She hadn't intended to, but at night, lying awake in the dark for hours, she couldn't help thinking about what she what she could do. Without meaning to, she began formulating a new master plan. One where she could get the best of both worlds, go to London and have Tom too. Could a life based on a potion really work? She wasn't sure. Perhaps Tom would become like a zombie, lose himself. But even if he did, she would be able to back out. And it could be good. Not just for her, for him too. Cecilia could never love him as much. It wasn't possible. He could be happy, she could be happy. Would.


	10. A Trying Few Days

A TRYING FEW DAYS

Twelve days before the wedding. The lacewing flies were ready. The Polyjuice potion was the first thing she brewed in ages, almost as a tester and it worked beautifully. Staring into the mirror, Merope saw her brother staring back at her. She smiled, to see what Morfin looked like smiling in a way that wasn't manic. It looked so strange. She was glad when the hour was up and she became herself again.

The polyjuice showed that she was capable of brewing Amortentia. She went to sleep that night hugging her knees. Five days. Five days before everything would be right again.

The next day she went to Diagon Alley for what she hoped would be the last time. By Floo, anyway. She rushed straight to the apothecary this time quietly requesting the Ashwinder eggs and other ingredients, handing over almost all the money she had in the world as if it were nothing, feeling almost a dizzy rush as it left her hands. The few remaining Sickles went on buying a second cheap cauldron, as the potion required two liquids brewing separately for a while. All or nothing.

Merope laid out the ingredients when she got home. Only the belladonna now. The apothecary sold belladonna, dried in jars but the book said fresh ingredients were always better, and belladonna grew in liberal amounts on the far side of a wood that lay just half a mile away. Deadly nightshade. She went back out straight away to gather some, careful to pick them by the stem.

She wanted to start right then and there, but forced herself to think about it logically. She was going to be awake for eighty four hours straight. The Invigoration Draught would make it easier but still, she'd rather start on a clean slate. A quick shot of sleeping potion that she had made back in the early days of her potions quickly knocked her out. She slept for seventeen hours, after weeks of just a few hours a night, waking well into the morning of the next day. Not a second to waste.

Three horned toad eyes, added to half a pint of boiling cactus juice. The eyes lay motionless at the bottom of the cauldron, doing nothing for more than ten minutes than suddenly dissolved into a fine powder that spread instantly, turning the colour to a murky brown. Merope quickly tipped the powdered wren skull into it, that she had been holding over the cauldron from the beginning. The timing was of utmost importance. If she had waited just two seconds after the eyes had dissolved, the potion would have congealed, making it impossible for the bone to ingrain itself. But the eyes could have dissolved anywhere from immediately to twenty minutes after being added. The brewing of Amortentia was full of chance changes. It was what made it so difficult.

Time dragged on. The most difficult part was the rat blood, coming twenty five hours in. The book stressed that the blood had to be fresh, and so one of Merope's laid out ingredients was a box containing a live rat. When the time came, Merope had been holding a squirming rat with a knife over the cauldron for more than forty minutes, then in a second the potion shifted colour slightly, became a tiny bit darker and she slit its throat, letting the blood pour into the cauldron. She had been measuring quantities out for so long now that she could easily estimate when half a gill of blood had been added. She tossed the body away from her, meaning to clear it up later and slammed the lid on before the potion vapourised and was lost.

Forty hours in and it was time to start using the second cauldron. There would be two things to worry about now, as well as the way that many of the ingredients had to be cut and prepared just seconds before they were added. Potions of this level were not easy. Earlier on, when she had started with the Swelling solution it had simply been a case of adding one thing after another but now it required real skill, the experience needed to pick up on the tiny changes in the liquid that meant the next thing would be needed soon. Merope worked in a trance, her two hands independently cutting, crushing, stirring, her eyes constantly flickering between the two cauldrons.

Finally the urge to sleep began to creep up on her again. First she started drinking just one shot of the Invigoration Draught every hour but as time went off it spread to two, then three, then four, which was a much higher concentration than she'd ever taken before. She started twitching involuntarily, her fingers trembling in a way that made it difficult to work. She paused, clenched her fists, tried to regain control of her body. This was a marathon and there was still a long way to go, but then the Ashwinder eggs had to be added, pouring more money than she'd ever had before into one the cauldrons and it began to give out thick black smoke. This was meant to happen but it quickly got into her eyes and lungs, making her cough and splutter. The book recommended Prewett's Patented Smoke Goggles but, although Merope had seen them in a shop in Diagon Alley, they were out of her price range.

She had to put a lid on the other cauldron to stop the smoke contaminating it which made it near impossible to tell what was going on with it while in the first one, the Ashwinder eggs hissed away, all the time causing the black smoke to billow out. Finally the hissing stopped, meaning the smoke had stopped forming and Merope could clear the air with a fan she had made from stretching fabric across two sticks. To her relief, the second cauldron had not malfunctioned in her absence. Everything was manageable again. Just. She was still having bouts of uncontrollable twitching and if she felt her pulse her heart was going more than double what she thought it should. A few times the room had started flickering to other colours in patches and once she repeatedly heard the door open behind her and kept having to turn around to check she hadn't just imagined it. It didn't matter. If she could keep it together for these difficult hours she would never have to touch a drop of the Invigoration Draught again.

Then there was the huge relief of pouring the contents of the second cauldron into the first, allowing her to concentrate on just the one again, then adding the final ingredient of a powdered human tooth – another thing she hadn't had to buy, as she had kept all her baby teeth - turning her wand onto the fire to make it much hotter, for a final blast of heat that would fuse the ingredients into each other a little more, the vapours gently rising in spirals, smelling of summer flowers and horses and freshly baked bread and it was done. She quietly put the lid on to stop the vapour escaping and being lost and left it to cool on its own. As the book said. She walked unsteadily to her bed and lay down, waiting in the dark for the Invigoration Draught to wear off so she could sleep. It was done, complete, over. She could hardly believe it. Tomorrow her new life would start.

She woke in the late afternoon with a pounding headache. The come down from the Invigoration Draught. She was used to it but it had never been this bad.

The Amortentia had cooled. She carefully decanted it into some old bottles. Sixteen, all lined up. She pulled a hair from her head and added it to the first one and it instantly dissolved, the colour turning from a pale pink to completely transparent.

She went down to the river again to scrub all the dirt and sweat from the past few days off, went back to the cottage and put on a cotton dress, heavily darned in places but still the thing she felt most comfortable in when walking through the surrounding countryside. It seemed very similar to what the muggle girls who worked on the farms wore. It allowed her to fit in. She poured a little of the first bottle into a smaller bottle, one she could put in her pocket, and set out. She had come this far, she was never going to question what she was doing now.

She was despairing of finding Tom, that she would have to go to his house, when she found him sitting at the side of the road against with his horse, eating a sandwich out of a paper bag. She walked up to him.

"Hello. My name is Merope." she said, glad that her voice didn't crack.

He showed no sign of having recognised her. "Right. Why should I care?"

She didn't answer his question, but held out the bottle. "Would you like a drink?"

He frowned. "From you? Are you joking? I might catch something."

She felt tears well up in her eyes, but she ignored them. "Are you sure?" she said, leaning closer. "It's very good." Her voice did crack that time.

"I'm sure, you mad girl. Will you get away from me?" he said, the expression on his face changing from amusement to unease. Merope shook her head and, saying nothing, pressed him down onto the grass, gently but firmly as she carefully poured the potion into his mouth. The tears were coming fast now, falling onto Tom's clothes, onto his hair, onto his face. She held his nose gently, waiting for him to swallow, waiting for it all be over but then he moved unexpectedly, taking her by surprise, throwing her off him. She fell back onto the floor as he spat the liquid out, swigging from another bottle, washing his mouth out.

Finally he seemed to be satisfied and turned to her, sitting on the floor watching him with frightened, tearstained eyes.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" he shouted, lunging towards her. On reflex, she pulled her wand out.

"Stupefy!" Losing his balance, he fell forwards as she skipped back, landing on his forearms, his head jerked backwards and then forwards, his forehead hitting the road far too fast. Merope stood horrified for a few seconds, then rushed to him, pulling him up, stroking his forehead, whispering heartfelt apologies in his deaf ears. She sat for a few seconds running her fingers over his body, through his hair, rubbing her cheek against his, revelling in the feeling of being so close to him, then began to drag him off the road. She was going to lie him down behind a tree, wait for him to come to so he could drink the potion but she was only half way when he started to move. She wasn't prepared for him and he slipped out of her clutches easily, staggering away from her, not seeming to know where he was until he turned and saw her. It was fear this time, not anger. Genuine fear. He ran to his horse and leapt up onto it, kicking it to get it moving. She watched him go. He would never allow her near him again, but no way was it over. She would find another way. She had not nearly killed herself brewing the potion to give up at the first hurdle. 

At the back of her mind these had been that niggling little worm of doubt and guilt. Now she was shameless, sunk as far as she could go. Now it hardly mattered. She would win this game.


	11. Interlude

INTERLUDE

Cecilia loved the wireless. It fascinated her, how a simple black box could play sound being generated miles away. New technology excited her. She was sure that before long, they would have invented a way to send actual pictures, and after that… who knew? She had once, moving very slowly and carefully, taken the back off the wireless and looked inside, both amazed by the amount of cables and also by the fact that all it was was metal and rubber. She wished that some day, she would be able to learn how it all worked and be a part of this new world of electronics but knew it would never happen. Once, she had talked to Tom about it. He had simply laughed, told her not to worry her pretty little head about things she didn't need to understand. She loved Tom and knew he would make a good husband but sometimes he was just _infuriating_.

Someone knocked on her door. She twisted the volume dial, turning the sound down. "Yes? Come in?"

Cecilia vaguely recognised the tramp's daughter, but didn't understand why she was there. She frowned. "What… why… can I help you?"

The girl closed the door quietly behind her. "I just wanted to have a talk, you know. I mean, you've ridden past my house quite a few times and we've never even spoken."

"Oh. Right. Well, how do you do? I'm Cecilia and you are…?" She offered a hand, but underneath her polite manner she was desperately confused. Why had the maid let this strange common girl up, without even telling her?"

The girl took the proffered hand and shook it slowly. "I don't do too well, really. Your kind spit on us when really you're no better than animals." Before Cecilia had time to even look shocked, the girl had crossed the room, grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled her head back sharply. "Nobody will hear you if you start screaming. Your maid won't, and this house is otherwise completely empty. I wouldn't waste your breath." The girl looked around the room slowly. "You have a _maid?_ You make me even sicker than I thought you would."

"What do you want?" Cecilia gasped. "You can have anything, just take it!"

"I don't want anything. None of your tainted filth, anyway. I just want to ask you some questions. When are you next seeing Tom?"

Cecilia stared at her incredulously. The girl was plainly mad. Still, maybe if she just didn't do anything to anger her she would depart-

"You heard me, you little whore!" The girl yanked harder on Cecilia's hair, lifting her momentarily a few inches from her bed. "I don't have all day!"

"Uh… tomorrow afternoon." she whimpered. "Now please go-"

"Not soon enough. If you decided you had to see him right now, what would you do?"

"Go… go to his house." She was crying now, her breath coming in short gasps, her eyes and nose streaming.

The girl dropped her, leaving her to curl against the wall, shaking. "He'll be there?"

"Yes, he always is this time of day." A thought struck her. "Please don't hurt him!"

The girl shot an exasperated look at her. "You're even stupider than I thought you were. Why would I hurt him?" She stood for a few seconds more, gazing around the room. "I mean, I always thought you'd be _better_ than this. Why would he love you? I mean, you have a _maid_, for Merlin's sake." She seemed to get more and more worked up, losing her calm, cold tone of voice. "You're _nothing!_ I could _kill_ you and you'd just lie there and let me! Look at you, snivelling! You make me _sick!_"

She _was_ mad. Cecilia could see it in her eyes, the crazed way they flitted around the room, the way her face contorted. If only she could distract her long enough, she might be able to escape through the door. The girl hadn't bolted it. "Look over there!"

The tramp's daughter stared at her incredulously. "How stupid do you think I am? _Crucio!_"

Fingers rippedapart inagony internal bleeding head splitting excruciating hot cold hot coldhotcold bones strained to breakingpoint until one final SNA- 

It stopped. Cecilia lay still. She couldn't move apart from to take tiny, slow breaths. All she could hear was a faint ringing in her ears. The girl moved towards her and all she could do was _lie_ there but all she did was take the scissors on the bedside table and cut off a quantity of Cecilia's hair. Just a few of the soft blonde curls.

She turned away again and Cecilia relaxed slightly but then with a speed and unexpectancy that was terrifying she spun back around and punched Cecilia savagely on the side of the head, then the other side, then between the eyes, then in the mouth, but by that time Cecilia didn't even know what was happening to her any more.

* * *

Merope is severely inbred, went through hell for most of her life and at this time was still under the influence of quite a strong drug. She's going to be slightly psychotic when meeting the person she hates over all others. I wrote it from this perspective to show it more clearly. 


	12. Make Or Break

MAKE OR BREAK

The maid had been easy. A whispered incantation, a wand jab at a window and she'd keeled over the already-clean table she'd been wiping. Merope had been prepared – the stunning spell would last at least thirty minutes, at which point the woman would awaken and assume she'd simply fainted. Another incantation unlocked the door and it was easy enough to reach through and unhook the chain. Breaking into a muggle house was ridiculously simple.

Merope had crept as silently as she could through the rooms to ensure she was alone before going to Cecilia. She'd known it was Cecilia's room because of the girl's name on the door.

It was going to be a simple questioning, a gentle stun and then leave, but faced with Tom's fiancée herself Merope could not help lashing out a little. It was only when she found herself standing over an unconscious Cecilia, her wand lying forgotten, her hands bloodied that Merope shook herself. Revenge was childish; besides, there was nothing to avenge. Soon everything would be as it should be.

She had not wanted to look at herself as Cecilia in the mirror but found it impossible to avoid, faced as she was by all the strange buttons and fastenings Cecilia had in her clothes. Slipping out of the door the maid approached her, slightly unsteady, rubbing her head. Her stunning spell had obviously not been as effective as she had thought.

"Where are you going, miss?"

She turned slowly, guiltily, afraid of being exposed even though she wore another's face. "Just out. I'll be back soon."

The maid frowned. "Are you all right, miss? You sound a bit different –"

"I'm fine." Merope said shortly, slipping around the door and shutting it before the maid could say anything else. Walking down the garden path, she wondered if she'd been dangerously unbelievable, then reminded herself it was only a matter of time before the real Cecilia, bound and gagged, was discovered lying bleeding at the bottom of her own wardrobe. It hardly mattered if the maid thought she was a little off.

People nodded to her as she passed them in the street, sometimes tripping over her own feet, unaccustomed to the heeled boots Cecilia seemed to wear. At first she simply stared in confusion at them but then learned to smile a little in return. People seemed to love Cecilia.

Merope reached the Riddle House in just under an hour. She planned to insinuate the house by the same means as she had the Ballingston property. Taking a fresh gulp of Polyjuice, she unlocked the kitchen door and began moving through the house, the seemingly endless maze of rooms, searching for a staircase. That night, Tom had appeared at an upstairs window. She had to find the room that window belonged to.

Merope caught sight of stairs and almost rushed towards them, letting her guard down. She didn't notice footsteps behind her, muffled as they were by the thick carpet. There was a tap on her shoulder. She started violently, emitting a small scream. There was no time to snatch her wand from Cecilia's pocket.

It was a tall, thin woman in her late forties, her hair pulled back in an elegant twist. She had Tom's blue eyes. "What on earth are you doing here, dear?"

"I'm here to see Tom." Merope said quickly, looking at the floor.

"But how did you get in?"

"The door was unlocked, I really need to see-"

"But why didn't you knock? When I heard you creeping around I thought you were some burglar! I was about to call the police before I saw you!"

"Sorry. _Where's Tom?_"

"Tom has gone out shooting. I am sure he will return in one or two hours–"

"Where are they?" Merope interrupted. The woman – presumably Mrs Riddle – frowned. "Are you all right, dear? You seem quite unlike yourself."

"Just tell me where they are and I'll go. Please."

"No. No, if it really is important you may stay here and wait for their return, but I can not let you go chasing off after them. You will soon be my daughter-in-law. I do care about your welfare, you know." She took hold of Merope's wrist in one bony hand, pulling her into a nearby room, sat her down on a chair. "Now, tell me what it is that's got you in such a state."

Merope forced herself to smile as convincingly as she could. "It's nothing, really. I just want to see Tom."

Mrs Riddle seemed to completely ignore her. "I shall have Sarah make you some sweet tea, then perhaps you will calm down a little. Sarah!"

Within a few seconds a girl scurried into the room. Another maid. Somehow Merope had thought Tom's household would be above servants. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Could you get us a tea tray?" The girl turned away but Mrs Riddle called her back. "Show me your fingernails." The girl extended her hands, looking at the floor. Mrs Riddle tutted. "This is your second warning, Sarah. If I see you with fingers this filthy again I will dismiss you." She turned back to Merope, shaking her head. "Now what is it, dear? Is it worries about the wedding? It's perfectly natural to feel a little apprehensive.

The maid arrived with a tray of tea and cakes. Mrs Riddle moved to pour a cup of tea but in leaning forwards caught sight of one of the bottles, pushed perhaps too unconcernedly into an outside pocket. Swiftly she reached over and grabbed the Polyjuice potion, held it up and frowned. She uncorked the top and sniffed it, but couldn't seem to place the scent.

"Cecilia, what is this?"

It took a long time for Merope to answer, "Whisky."

She had expected Mrs Riddle to either nod and give it back, or disbelieve her. Not the slow look of disgust that crept over her face, or her calling for the maid again requesting it to be poured down the sink. When the maid had left she turned on Merope. "Why on earth are you carrying _whisky_ around with you? You're a girl of seventeen!"

Her reaction seemed totally bizarre to Merope, who'd been drinking rum in her milk since she was six months old. "In case I got thirsty?"

"That's it. I'm telephoning your mother. There's something very wrong with you today." Mrs Riddle rose from her seat to go to the hall, where the state-of-the-art telephone sat on a table, but to her surprise her future daughter-in-law snatched, quite violently, onto her wrist.

"Don't get my mother. Just wait until Tom gets back and he'll explain everything."

* * *

They sat for the next fifty minutes in silence, Mrs Riddle openly scrutinising the girl in front of her, Merope hunched, occasionally looking up to check the clock on the mantelpiece. The polyjuice would last an hour, perhaps a few minutes more or less. All she could hope for was Tom returning in time. If he didn't… she was finished. Cecilia knew who had attacked her. She would be hunted down if she stayed. Whatever happened, she was leaving that night, with or without Tom.

It had come to the time when she was sure she had only a few minutes remaining when there came the sound of the door opening. Mrs Riddle sprang from her seat and hurried down the hall to meet her son, dressed in a thick leather waistcoat, carrying a long air rifle. "Tom? Cecilia's here and she's in a queer state, she says you can explain everything."

Tom set the gun down and looked questioningly at the blonde girl staring at him so strangely. Her entire manner seemed to have changed. Cecilia was usually graceful, moving like liquid, always careful of her posture but now she seemed jagged, moving jerkily, her hands bunched into fists, her hair falling over her face instead of immaculately pinned back. He noticed a few of her buttons were done up wrong, too. He started to move towards her, then everything started to happen at once.

The telephone began to ring. Mrs Riddle quickly left the room to answer it, leaving Merope and Tom alone. It was at that moment that Merope realised a strange itching was coming all over her skin. There was no time, Drawing the second bottle quickly from Cecilia's dress, she handed it to Tom. "Drink this."

He looked at her doubtfully. "Why? What is it? And what's all this talk of me explaining anything-"

"Just drink it. Please. For me. I made it myself."

Tom still looked vaguely suspicious, but raised the bottle to his lips. Time seemed to almost stop as he tipped the bottle up, letting the potion into his mouth. He swallowed. He smiled.

"Well, it certainly tastes nice." Looking at her, he frowned. "Cec… your eyes…"

Merope spun around to see her reflection in the glass of a dark painting. Her face was a bizarre blend of Cecilia and herself, her pupils seeming to shrink and then dilate and shift backwards as she watched. She turned back to Tom, staring at her in confusion, then heard his mother's voice filtering out from the hall.

"But that's impossible, Cecilia's right here! She's sitting in the parlour as we speak! Hold on a moment, I'll just get her." Footsteps approaching.

The time had surely come to snatch up the heavy vase conveniently sitting on the table, hurl it at the glass, and vault over the windowsill.

* * *

A/N Writing Merope out of her environment was quite difficult, hopefully it doesn't read too badly. 


	13. A Moment Of Utter Ecstasy

A MOMENT OF UTTER ECSTASY

The shock Tom got from seeing his usually demure fiancé jump through a smashed window, shortly after her eyes started to mutate gave Merope something of a head start. She had gone halfway across the expansive, over-green lawn before Tom started chasing her. She had reverted almost completely now. Running was easier with legs she was used to. The hair, being dead, was the last thing to change, so Tom kept the impression of blonde Cecilia fleeing right until he caught up with the witch.

He clamped his hands on her shoulders, pulling her back. Her legs kept running and she almost fell. He spun her around to face him, just as black colour seeped down the silky fair strands. He let go, he stepped back in shock. Merope could hardly blame him. To his puerile, endearing muggle mind one thing turning into another was impossible. Like magic.

"What… how… who are you? You tried to poison me!" he gasped.

Behind him, Merope could see Mrs Riddle, who had opted to take the front door, rather than the window, hurrying across the grass, hitching her skirts up. "Come with me." she whispered. "I'll explain everything."

She expected him to refuse, to drag her over to his mother to sort it all out in some sanitised cold exchange, locked back in the parlour. It wouldn't be such a disaster. Although unshaken by the fact Cecilia had just become a different girl, neither would expect a quick stupefy in the back. But Tom simply looked behind him uncertainly, then back to the dark haired damsel standing before him.

How could Merope understand the bizarre confusion starting to bubble up inside him? He knew that the girl was nothing to him but the tramp's daughter. This was the same girl who, only yesterday, had tried to forcefully poison him. He knew this, but some part of his brain was telling him that this girl was special. He could trust her, far more than any of his family, far more than Cecilia. They had some strange primordial connection, one that had somehow been forged since their last meeting.

He let go of her shoulders, allowed her to grasp one of his hands and pull him across the lawn to the edge of the garden. There was a stream that ran down the edge of the fence; he helped her across without even thinking about what he was doing, standing on a stone in the middle of the water and lifting her across. She clutched onto his arms and there was a moment when he held her face an inch from his and felt again the strange but powerful connection to her.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Tom heard his mother shout behind him. He couldn't remember her yelling profanities before. He tried to stop, looked back but the girl pulled him away.

"Quick. Over the wall." she whispered, breathless, her rasping voice strangely endearing. She stayed behind him as he scrambled over it, the uncemented stones shifting worryingly beneath him. He ignored his mother, shouting and screaming at him to return that instant. He would make it up with her later. There was a definite feeling that if he left this girl now he would never see her again, and the thought of that was becoming increasingly hard to bear.

His mother would not attempt to cross the stream. She stood on the bank for a few moments, her shouts becoming quieter, seeming to lose energy. Finally she turned to walk briskly back to the house, presumably for backup.

Merope watched this retreat with gratification. It was starting to look like she might actually pull this off. She tried to think about what would be happening on the other end of proceedings. It would take some time for them to connect Cecilia's description with the Gaunt family and their home. It crossed her mind that perhaps she should have used another polyjuice disguise for procuring Cecilia's essence. It would have taken just a little extra time to pull a hair from an innocent passer-by (anyone would have done) and she would have had all the time in the world now. Still, far too late now.

Always on the alert for meddling seekers (the Riddles surely had an army of people they could call up for a search party in a crisis like this) Merope led Tom through fields and over fences until finally she dragged him down a steep embankment. They half ran, half fell down, plunging into the bracken and brambles at the bottom.

They lay there, a few inches away from a trickle of a stream, the damp mud soaking through their clothes.

"Who are you?" Tom said. He looked so muddled with himself, kept looking, almost with horror, at the ground upon which he was lying. Merope reached out and gently wiped a spatter of mud from his cheek. He didn't resist, just watched her hand with a dazed expression.

"I'm Merope. I'm…" she smiled almost apologetically, "the tramp's daughter. Gaunt."

Tom shook his head slowly. "I know that. I know… who you are. But what's going on? Why… _you were Cecilia!"_

Merope wore her best look of charming confusion. "What? Don't be silly. Cecilia jumped out of the window and I was waiting outside. She ran off somewhere, I don't know why. She startled me, which is why I ran. I was waiting for you."

He thought a lot about that, sat there chewing on his thumbnail like a little child for a while, looking at the ground. Merope knew he would believe her story. The idea that she really had been Cecilia was incomprehensible to him, she knew. He would simply convince himself that it had been a black haired girl he'd seen running across the lawn. His mind had just been playing tricks on him.

"You tried to make me drink that stuff." he said slowly. "What was that? Why?"

"That was nothing. Just some of my homemade wine. I thought you might want to try it, that's all. I was quite upset when you spat it out. I didn't mean to–" she was about to say _curse_ but then thought better of it "_hit_ you like I did. It was just, you scared me, coming at me like that."

He thought long about this as well, then nodded. He looked deeply ashamed. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I did that." He stared at her, his eyes almost pleading. "Please forgive me. I'll make it up to you, I promise. I don't know what came over me–"

"It's fine, really. I know you didn't mean it."

"Why were you waiting outside my house?"

Had the potion now sufficiently soaked through his veins, permeated his brain? She thought about it. He had followed her this far, blatantly disobeyed his mother, even rolled into a bed of mud and worms after her. This was surely not normal behaviour. But who knew how these muggle minds worked? She would have to choose her words carefully.

"I just wanted to get to know you better. We're neighbours, you ride past my house all the time. And I like you. From what I saw of you, you… were one of the best people I've ever come across.

A strange expression was growing on his face, like a small boy who is hearing hints that he is about to receive a fantastic present. Encouraged, she continued. "Whenever I saw you with Cecilia… when I found out you were going to marry her it made me realise…" His eyes were wide, his mouth slightly open, longing for her to say it. "The truth it… I've fallen in love with you."

The strange, wonderful Merope had said that she loved him. Angels seemed to sing gloriousness around him. Hallelujah! They were bathed in heavenly light, plain, stupid Tom who would never compare to the vision of loveliness hunched before him, more real than his fake parents and doll fiancé. He shook his head, hardly able to breathe, taken over with rapture. Finally he managed to get the words out. "I love you too. The beauty of the moment was almost too much to bear and he began to cry, his eyes swelling up and reddening, his nose beginning to run. He tried to hide this hideous face from beautiful Merope but she pulled his hands away and he saw that she was crying too, in a way that made her even more lovely. Slowly, falteringly, she touched his face, the tears melting onto her hand, pulled him towards her. They kissed, tears, snot and saliva all mixing together in a moment of utter ecstasy.

A/N: The love potion takes longer to work properly than in HBP... this is because... erm... it's a _different kind_ of love potion. Yes. I never meant to flip to Tom's perspective but it ended up like that. Hopefully it doesn't wreck the flow too much.


	14. Plans

PLANS

"But why can't I just introduce you to my parents? They might be a little surprised, considering I thought I was in love with Cecilia but once they meet you they'll see how wonderful you are and Cecilia will be upset but she'll be fine and we can marry and you can live with us and it'll all be _perfect_–"

They had crawled up the embankment, muddy and with torn clothes. Merope was leading Tom to her cottage, taking a long, concealed route. She had to pick up things she would need when they went away. Not that Tom knew they were going away yet.

"Tom, listen. Cecilia thinks I hurt her. Hurt her badly. It must have been some other girl but she's convinced it was me and your family believes her. If they see me they'll _kill _me. I have to leave this place. Go a long way."

"But if they just _met _you–"

"I have to leave, today. Even if I could go and live with you, _my_ family's a problem. They hate your kin– your family. They're in prison at the moment but if when they come out I'm still here and with you they'll kill you and me and everyone connected with us."

"Don't worry about that. If they tried to get into our house they'd find a lot of trouble. We have dogs."

Merope sighed. It was so _frustrating_. "Just trust me when I say my family could get into that house and kill everyone and everything in it. Including whatever dogs you have. Would I lie to you?"

Of course she wouldn't lie to him. She was perfection incarnate. There almost seemed to be a pool of heavenly light surrounding her oily head, her feet barely touching the ground that wasn't good enough for her.

He was off again. Merope didn't like the way he gazed at her like that. At first she was pleased. The potion had worked. Now it was starting to make her feel uncomfortable, which was something she hadn't expected.

She gently pushed him to start walking again. "Tom, I'm leaving. The only way for us to be together is if you come with me. That's what it comes down to. I'm sorry." she said as an afterthought. She understood the position she was putting him in. Leave his family, home, inheritance to elope with a girl he only properly met that day? It was against everything he'd ever been brought up to do. Even if he did refuse, she thought, it wouldn't be so bad. It wouldn't be the complete end of her life. At least she would have tried. At least she could leave with the memory of the hour when the impossible became a reality, when he'd been in love with her. At least she would have that to remember. She could leave and not have to see him when the effects wore off, getting closure from it all and then start all over again.

She was almost disappointed when Tom finally looked up from the patch of dirt he'd been staring at and took her hand.

"You're worth it."

_My love, if only you knew_, she thought darkly, clasping his hand in return and leading him more quickly on the route to the cottage.

She didn't trust to go through the front in case it was being watched, instead approaching from the back to peer through the little window at the back. The cottage was built on a gentle slope, so the back window was on ground level even though it was high up on the inside. Satisfied that there was nobody inside, Merope lay back and kicked the rotting windowframe. After three kicks it gave a huge crack and the pane of glass disengaged from the wall, falling inwards. It hit the stove and shattered. Merope slid through after it, landing on the stove, skidding a little on the broken glass but regaining her balance to drop onto the floor.

What to take? Not much. Books were out of the question. So were nonessential potions, which Merope decided was everything apart from the Amortentia. She would take all her clothes, which was not difficult considering she only owned four items of clothing.

Sixteen full wine bottles, wrapped in a thin layer of fabric to cushion them and packed in a canvas bag. All she would need.

Setting the bag down, Merope entered her father's room for the last time. Battered the lock on her father's rotting writing desk with a rock until it gave way. Found a piece of black parchment and a quill and a bottle of ink and sat down at the kitchen table.

She knew time was precious but still sat there for a while staring at the parchment before her. What on earth could she say? How could she explain what she was doing? Finally, forcing herself to move and write something, she managed a few short sentences. They sounded all wrong and she wanted to screw it up and start again but there was no time. She folded it up, wrote her father's name on it and propped it up on the table.

She had lifted the bag out of the window and was about to wriggle out herself when she noticed the glint of gold next to her bed. When her family had still been there, Merope had had a few square inches, a hollow between the mattress and the fireplace, that she considered her own space, overlooked by the other two. It was here that she had stashed her locket, along with a few other pointless possessions. Dropping off the stove she went to retrieve it, hung it around her neck. The one piece of her family she would take into her new life.

The bag of wine bottles was heavier than she thought it would be. At first when she picked it up it had seemed cumbersome but manageable. By the time she reached Tom, sitting obediently on that rock (the rock he'd sat on when she first set eyes on him) she was stopping and setting it down every few steps to regain her energy.

He sprang up to take it from her and the surprise of the weight made him nearly drop it. "What is it?"

"Nothing you need to know about. Woman stuff." He nodded, even winking in an I-understand-say-no-more way. Even so, he could hardly manage to carry it for any distance. Merope took one handle when he started to struggle. They moved at a crushingly slow pace towards Tom's house, dangling the sole ingredient of their relationship between them. Merope made him take the most discreet route into the grounds as possible. To her gratification, he took this seriously, leading her through a patch of forest that looked as if it hadn't been tended to for years.

They agreed the best way, at least to start with, was by horse. None of the local cab drivers could be trusted. The grounds were strangely empty – presumably all the staff had been enlisted to hunt for Tom in the surrounding area. "Or else gossiping about it to their friends." Tom said.

There were five horses in the stables. They took two. Tom took his own big black mare that he introduced as Bella. Merope took a young brown gelding called Mustard. Tom strapped Merope's bag to Mustard's back as carefully as was possible. "Shouldn't move too much." he said finally.

Tom wanted to get money and belongings from the house. At first Merope wouldn't let him, but then relented. Still, she insisted on coming with him. There was probably still people lurking about who would need to be knocked out.

They first went to a painting and Tom swung it back to reveal a metal door in the wall. He slowly twisted the knob back and forth before it swung open. "My father told me the combination once. I never forgot it." He snatched the little bundles of paper inside and plunged them into the pockets of his coat. Merope waited defensively at the bottom of the stairs while he went to get things from his room.

He took a lot longer than she expected and she started to get edgy. It seemed that any second now, the door would open and she would be faced with a dozen people. Would she be able to hit them all before they reached her? Perhaps not. Rapid fire casting was difficult and there was not so much of a walk between the stairs and the door.

She was concentrating so hard on what was in front of her that she did not hear Tom coming back down. He touched her shoulder, making her squeal in shock.

He was holding an envelope. His own explanatory note. She could have demanded to read it and he would have let her but she didn't want to, and not just because of the time it would eat up. She didn't really want to know what he thought his reasons were.

He left it on the kitchen table, just as Merope had done.


	15. Letters

LETTERS

"Dear Mother and Father,

I am leaving. I don't know where and I don't know when or if I will return.

I have met a wonderful girl and I am in love with her. She is the most amazing person I have ever met. You would like her if you met her but she is scared. Her family are violent. She has to leave Hangleton to be safe and I am going with her.

Tell Cecilia I am truly sorry. If I had not met someone so much better I am sure we would have been very content in our life together. I am sure she will find someone who will love her far more than I thought I did.

Tom

P.S. I am sorry for taking the money from the safe but we will need it in the days ahead."

Mr Riddle looked up from the note, shook his head slowly with a mixture of anger and disbelief. His wife sat beside him, staring straight ahead of her in some numb shock.

Cecilia was crying with choked sobs. What a horrendous day it had been. First she was attacked in her own room and tied up in her own wardrobe by some mad waif, now the love of her life was running away. With someone else. Her face was swollen and numb. She'd been told that it would all be purple by the next day. Her parents sat on either side of her, glaring at the Riddles. As if it was their fault for raising their son to be so unstable.

"It must be that girl who came here pretending to be Cecilia." Mrs Riddle said. "She was sitting here drinking my tea… how could I ever have thought it was her? She must have been wearing a wig and a mask or _something_…"

The front door opened and someone rushed down the hall and into the room. Frank, the gardener's boy. He was closely followed by a policeman.

"Look what we found at that tramp's place." Frank said grimly, handing a dirty scrap of paper to Mr Riddle, who briefly scanned it, than with a snarl of rage, threw it down on the coffee table.

Cecilia gingerly pulled it towards her, trying to unfold it without touching the filthy thing too much. It was written with bad quality ink, a bad quality pen, on bad quality paper. The words were scratchy and scrawled, the page spotted with ink droplets that had spread like veins into the cracks in the paper.

_Deer Father_

_Wen you reed this I will be far away. I am in luve with Tom Riddle and he is in luve with me. We arre goeing away toogether._

_Merope._

Cecilia dropped the paper as if it were diseased. It was the mad girl. Tom had run away with the mad girl. It didn't make any sense. The girl had been hideous, some mutated wreck of inbreeding…

She was so shocked she forgot to keep sobbing. In the silence, her father picked up the note and read it himself. It passed from person to person in silence.

"She's got him drugged." Mrs Riddle finally said. "I know my son. He would never leave his family like this. Especially not for a filthy little creature like her."

There was nothing that could be done. Of course, an official, more extensive search would begin. The Riddle family had power enough to divert the police from their usual job of catching burglars and murderers to checking every inn in a twenty mile radius but then, there was no reason them to stay within a twenty mile radius. All they could do was wait, and hope.

Cecilia's parents shortly took their daughter home. There seemed no point in staying in the house that now, it seemed, they would never have a piece of.


	16. London

LONDON

Merope and Tom had ridden perhaps ten miles when it started to get dark, but they didn't stop. First following a bridle-path in the growing twilight, until the trickle of cars gliding down the main road leading out of Greater Hangleton stopped altogether ("We've got two." Tom proudly said, when they saw the first one). Away from the houses, there was no source of artificial light, but it was a cloudless night and even when darkness fully descended it was still possible to see the way. The horses didn't like it, walking on hard tarmacadam at night, but Tom still coerced them to keep walking at a steady pace.

They reached York just as dawn began to break. The horses were tired. Their riders were tired. Merope in particular, completely unaccustomed to riding, was very sore and stiff. Leading the horses through the nearly-empty streets, Tom bought two meat and potato pies from a street-vendor who had set up early. They sat in the street to eat them.

"What do we do now? Tom asked. It almost surprised Merope. He had been the one in control. He had been the one who had known they would have to go to York, that from there they could go anywhere else. He had known to take horses, he had known to take money. In this strange, overwhelming Muggle world, Merope was lost.

She had to think about his question for a while. "London." she said finally. "We have to go to London." Diagon Alley was in London, the only wizarding place she knew about. From London she could get to Diagon Alley, and from Diagon Alley she would be able to use her potions skills to earn money. The master plan was all starting to come back into focus. Phase one was complete. Now it was time for phase two.

"London?" Tom said doubtfully. "I've heard it's awfully dirty. Full of beggars, people all crammed in together. Why do you want to go there? Wouldn't we be better finding somewhere quiet and rural, where we can bring up our children in a proper fashion? Somewhere like home?"

"No. Well, maybe one day." she added, to appease him. "But now we have to go somewhere where we can earn money. I don't think all that paper you have will last us forever. Besides, I've always wanted to go to London."

Tom looked pained, like there was something he wanted to say, but didn't want to upset her. Finally he nodded. "London it is, then."

They ended up turning the horses loose. Merope wanted to sell them for more money, but Tom was worried they would end up being slaughtered. "Bella's been my mount since I was eleven. I can't bear the thought of her being put in a pie." He hoped they would find their way back to Little Hangleton; if not, he was sure they could at least get away from York and make a new life being wild on the Yorkshire Dales. Merope didn't particularly care, but saw that Tom did and hoped the horses would be all right for his sake.

They bought two tickets to London at the train station. Tom peeled off two of the bits of paper and gave them to the man behind the glass, and received two more bits of paper in return. The Muggle world did seem to use a lot of paper, Merope thought.

The train arrived and they sat in a compartment, alone. At first they talked excitedly about what would happen once they got to London, but a day of excitement and no sleep was too much. Tom fell asleep first, leaning against the wood panelled wall, his mouth slightly open, snoring gently. Merope watched the countryside zipping by for a while, before curling up on the seat, laying her head in the crook between Tom's arm and his lap. He woke up momentarily when she moved, lightly stroked her hair, then went back to sleep. He was almost better asleep, Merope thought, a warm mass of soft, expanded flesh and muscle. Innocent, trusting enough to fall asleep in her company. She held the thought that this could be every night for the rest of her life, then closed her own eyes.

They woke up, seemingly at the same moment, to find a strange man in a bowler hat sitting in the compartment, looking quietly uncomfortable as they sat up, yawning. "Where are we?" Tom finally asked him.

"Just left Birmingham. Next stop Oxford." He coughed, then pointedly opened his briefcase and puled out a newspaper. He opened it, positioning it so it obscured his head and shoulders from view.

Merope wriggled back down next to Tom and fell asleep again. The next thing she knew was a sharp rapping on the compartment door. The man in the bowler hat had gone. She glanced out of the window and saw the sign. They were in London.

After the bright countryside of Yorkshire, the city seemed very dark and dusty, the thick smog in the sky blocking the sunlight. There were people lying in the street, some of them crippled. They walked along the Thames, so thick and murky, arm in arm.

"So this is London." Tom finally said. "I always knew the streets weren't paved with gold, but this…" He shook his head. "I suppose we need to find somewhere to live."

After some asking around, which Tom did all of, they found a room. It was in a badly constructed block, hastily built with the huge influx of people coming into the city when it was industrialised. The walls were paper-thin, and to get from the stairs to the room they had to pass through another room, occupied by a painfully thin woman in her thirties and her three teenage sons. The whole building, containing over thirty people, had only one outhouse. Many of the people on the upper floors negated it completely and simply threw their waste out of the window.

The room itself was small, just a sliver of space with a glassless window at one end. When they first entered it, Tom took one look at it, at its filth-encrusted floor, thick cobwebs and stained walls and retched. Merope thought he probably would have been sick if he'd had anything in his stomach. The landlord looked like he didn't know what to make of them. Merope fitted in, with her ragged clothes and filthy hair, but Tom was so obviously from the upper class. Even his fingernails were spotless. Merope could see that the room was some kind of hell for him. The potion was strong.

He refused to even sit on the floor until it was at least semi-clean. He hauled a bucket of water up the stairs from the single tap outside and together they scrubbed at the floor with Merope's most ragged shirt. Tom gave her one of his own to replace it. It was difficult without soap, but at last Tom agreed the floor would do to sleep on.

That first night was cold. They each lay, entangled as close as possible for warmth, wearing all their clothes. Tom's cloak was thick, but not thick enough to soften the hard floor. "It'll only be for a little while." Tom kept whispering. Merope wanted to make love but Tom was flaccid and couldn't do it, shivering miserably in the dark. The draught from the glassless window blew over them.

It was still perfect, utter heaven, though. And when Merope looked into Tom's eyes she saw a shadow of that same feeling. They had each other. Everything would be all right.

The next morning Tom crawled around on his hands and knees, knocking the floorboards until he found one that was loose. He pulled at it with some force and it ripped off with a splintering noise, exposing stinking, rotting wood underneath. He nestled the bag of paper in amongst the rot and replaced the floorboard.

"These people will take anything they can see." he explained grimly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out two more bits of paper and gave them to Merope. "I'm going to try to get a job. You should probably go find a market and get us some food." He smiled. She smiled back. He kissed her, first on the lips, then on the forehead. He left the room. Merope heard the woman next door mutter something at him.

She walked around. More looking for Diagon Alley than somewhere to buy food. She had somehow, naïvely thought that it would only take perhaps half an hour to find the place. The day wore on, walking around and around higgledy streets and past smoke-belching factories, and she began to realise how stupid she had been. Stupid! London was a huge city, the biggest in the country, Tom had told her. And surely Diagon Alley wouldn't be in the most obvious place, they would want to hide it from prying Muggles. Stupid!

She found a market. A seething mass of people, vendors shouting out at passers by, shaking their goods, customers pushing past each other, a deafening rabble of price negotiation. It was the first time Merope had been near so many people. Touched from all sides, and all of them Muggles. _Filthy! Contaminated! _ some old part of her mind kept screaming. It was unsettling.

She left with a chunk of cured ham and three greenish potatoes. All the paper was gone and she had only a few coins left. Still, Tom had a lot of paper.

Tom was still gone when Merope returned to the block. The woman next door eyed the paper bag she carried hungrily and licked her lips as she passed by, but said nothing. In the privacy of the room, Merope ripped the potatoes apart and cooked each piece with her wand. It was a painfully slow process. The woman next door had a collection of scrap metal arranged in such a way to mimic a stove, but Merope didn't want to share her food.

The last piece seemed just about cooked when Tom came in. He had taken a job at a saw mill and had spent the day helping a team of men feed huge slabs of wood into a water-powered circular saw.

They sat opposite each other on the floor, dividing up the food. The ham tasted as bad as it smelt but all of it was eaten. Before they curled up on the floor for the second night, Tom slotted a thin piece of wood he'd stolen from the saw mill into the window frame to stop the draughts.

He had to take it out again in the middle of the night. The ham had made him sick. Merope, having ingested rancid meat many times over the course of her life, was fine but Tom had never come across salmonella before. He knelt next to the hole in the wall, pale, sweating and shaking, vomiting. In the quiet night, Merope could hear it hitting the floor below. She held him, stroking his clammy hair.

Suddenly, from leaning helplessly against Merope, Tom clumsily lurched up, ran out of the door, waking one of the teenage sons up in the next room, who muttered some abuse at him. Merope followed him, but by the time Tom reached the outhouse it was too late; he'd already soiled his trousers on the way down the stairs.

He sat in the outhouse, crying, alternating between sobbing and vomiting onto the floor. He wouldn't let Merope sit in there with him, so she sat just outside the door. She felt dreadful. Tom had a warm bed and sterile food and a hot bath back in Yorkshire and she had brought him here. She was making the man she loved put himself through hell.

Still, she had made her choice. And things could only get better.

Tom insisted on going to work the next day, even though he was still very sick. "What will they say if I don't turn up on the second day?" He could barely walk in a straight line.

Merope took some more of the paper out of the hiding place and went shopping again. She bought food, just some simple vegetables this time, something that wouldn't upset Tom's stomach further, along with two metal spoons. She bought a straw mattress. It cost a lot, but they couldn't go on sleeping on the floor forever. She also found a cooking pot with a large hole in the bottom, and decide she could easily patch it up. She had not found Diagon Alley.

A new concern had come into her head. She had no idea as to when the Amortentia would start to wear off, or the rate of which it would. She recalled the book saying it was about four days, but then it had also said in a faded note at the beginning of the book that it should be noted that all effects described were correct for use with people exposed to the effects of magic. In other words, when the book said four days for a wizard, it might be very different for a Muggle.

She dragged the mattress into the room. It fitted neatly against the back wall. The hole in the cooking pot was covered with the serrated top of a tin can. The one piece of wandwork Merope was an expert in was making fire. The endless varying temperatures of her potions had ensured that. She had made fire hot enough to melt metal before, so it was relatively simple to weld tin can into iron pot.

Tom returned well after the soup was finished. He looked dreadful, as white as a sheet, and shivering violently. "I forgot where we lived." he mumbled into Merope's shoulder as she hugged him. He lay down on the mattress, Merope gently propping his head up and spooning hot vegetable soup into his mouth. He didn't notice that a small ignited stick, lying on the floor underneath the pot, was keeping the soup hot.

Tom went out to work again the next day. He was somewhat better. Merope went to look for a job too. It was a cotton mill she finally decided on. A middle-aged woman in a thick dress interviewed her in a few minutes without even looking at her face, then lead her out to a hall where perhaps a hundred women stood, working deftly on a hundred looms. The noise was deafening. Merope tried sticking her hands over her ears but the woman simply batted them away. "We'll have none of that. Do good for you to get used to it now."

She lead Merope to an empty loom and passed her onto the girl working next to her, who showed her what to do in as few steps as possible. The noise hurt. Merope tried discreetly ripping pieces from Tom's shirt and stuffing the scraps of material in her ears but it didn't work very well. Coming out at the end of the day the bustling London street seemed very quiet.

Even with two incomes, Merope and Tom were only just scraping enough to cover living costs. Merope would earn two pounds a week, Tom three. The rent for the room was six pounds a week, leaving no money for food or other necessities, and Tom's money could not last forever. They talked about it that night. Tom was worried. Merope wasn't so much. So far the drawbacks of London life hadn't seemed all that different to her old life in the country, and food had been easy to get hold of there. Tom just wasn't used to the concept of stealing, that was all.

Later she and Tom finally made love. It wasn't earthmoving. It wasn't fireworks. Just a few minutes of intimacy, Tom's hands on her skin and his heavy breathing in her ear. She couldn't even see him in the near pitch black, the board at the window only letting a thin crack of light through.

On the sixth day Merope caught Tom looking at her with an unsettling expression. Almost suspicious. She poured him out a spoonful from one of her bottles, lined up in the corner of the room.

"Medicine." she said. "For your stomach." He took it without complaint, closed his eyes, and then opened them to look at her with more love than he ever had.

So it was seven days for Muggles, Merope noted. She would remember that.


	17. Problems

Seven month break. Woo.

PROBLEMS

Maybe it was her mind playing tricks on her, but Merope was sure that she discovered that she was pregnant, not from painfully tender breasts or feeling nauseous in the morning, but from simply knowing there was a person growing inside her.

She and Tom had been together six weeks. Their little room had become a home, not just a place where they stayed. Tom almost seemed to look at it with pride rather than disgust now. They both worked hard to keep their lives afloat. But only just, and the money was almost gone.

Bringing a baby into the equation… on the one hand, Merope loved the concept of having a child, Tom's child no less. Realistically, however, it was hard to justify. It would take up valuable time, valuable food… it was hard to see how it would work. But the only other option was to dump it once it was born, and that was not an option. She was nervous of telling Tom, but he took it as well as could be expected.

"A baby?" he said, entirely too loudly, when she whispered her secret into his ear when they lay curled together in bed. He turned to stare at her, eyes wide with such fear in them. She stroked his hair gently to comfort him.

"Yes, but it won't be so bad. Just think, Tom, _our child…_"

"We barely have enough for ourselves, what are we going to _do_?"

"We'll be all right."

He shook his head violently, disturbing her hand. "No. No, there's no way this can work, we'll _starve_, our child will _die_, we'll get kicked out into the _street_…" There was a horrible rising panic in his voice. He pulled away from her, stared straight up at the ceiling. "Merope, we have to go home."

Merope exhaled sharply, pulled his head backwards. "Have you _forgotten_ why we left? If we go back now, my family will _kill_ me, and you too. We _have_ to stay here."

"No, we _have_ to go home."

She glared at him. "Fine. You go home. If it's a choice between going back and being killed with you, and staying here and surviving alone, I'm staying here."

"I really think you overestimate your family's –"

"_No._ I don't. Believe me."

Tom sighed slowly. He thought her paranoid and stupid, Merope knew, but he'd never leave her. She kissed his forehead and settled back to sleep. Everything would work out all right.

Two months later, and there was only two bits of paper left, which they agreed to save for emergencies. Tom went to his employers to ask for a raise to support his pregnant wife (Tom and Merope had never formally married, but it seemed a triviality. Merope called herself Riddle now anyway). He did not get it.

Food had never been a problem in the countryside. Along with the spacious vegetable garden behind the cottage, the Gaunt family had simply stolen from the farmers. Routinely Merope had stood on the other side of a wall of a field of sheep, stunned one and then levitated it away. All without even going into the field. The farmers had blamed wolves. A few had even tried keeping a vigil through the night in the field with a shotgun, but they were simply stunned along with the sheep.

In the city, food was too valuable. It was never left unattended, and without going all out and stupefying everyone in the area, near impossible to steal. Merope had not thought of that.

They cut back to sharing the equivalent of a slice of bread and an apple each day. Tom started to raid bins, though he never admitted it to Merope.

"My foreman gave it to me." he would say, presenting a lump of fat and gristle. Vegetable peelings, sometimes moulding. He would lay it down with such an expression of shame, blaming himself for not being able to give Merope better. Even on so little food, he would refuse to take most of it.

"I'm not hungry." he'd say, biting from his bread and then giving the rest to Merope. "You need it more than me anyway."

Nobody would mistake him for a gentleman from the upper class now. His hair, growing too long now, was matted, full of dust and grease and lice. The noise at the mill was making him deaf, and with Merope's work doing the same thing they either had to shout at each other or talk into each other's ears. He stank of oil and sweat and sometimes faeces and he was becoming dangerously thin. On the rare occasions he took off his now-filthy shirt Merope could see his ribs clearly outlined under the skin. And he shivered so much. In the night, as they wrapped their arms and legs around each other for warmth, Merope could feel the gooseflesh on his arms and back. He never complained, just kept that same pained expression of shame. He thought it was all his fault.

"Promise you'll never leave me." he managed to whisper one night. "I'm so sorry for… for all of this. I promise one day it'll be different. I promise."

She gently kissed his hair. "You silly thing. None of this is your fault." she whispered in his ear. "I'd rather die than leave you."

A strange thing was happening, though. At the beginning, she dosed Tom once a week. But then somehow it became necessary to do so every six days. Then five. With so regularly taking the potion, Tom was rapidly developing a tolerance to it. The bottles that were supposed to last two years by her first calculations were starting to look more short lived. Still, it hardly mattered. Tom loved her, it was obvious. There was surely no potion that could produce those kinds of feelings, especially not one that she could brew.

It occurred to Merope one day, working mindlessly on her loom, that perhaps London had not been the best idea. She imagined for a few minutes living somewhere in the country. Maybe they could have lodged on a farm in return for doing some labour. There would be a delicious hot meal every night, made from fresh food. They would drink hot cider in winter and in summer there would be the harvest, everyone would help in a mad rush to get the hay in in time. There would be a nice old woman who was too old to work any more, who would happily look after her child in the day once it was born, then when he or she was old enough they would come and work on the farm themselves. Merope would teach them to milk the cows, to plant seeds, to shear sheep, the way she had seen the farmers doing back home.

Then the fantasy melted away, leaving her back with her loom, with raw fingers and the deafening noise. Even if she and Tom wanted to leave London and go back to Yorkshire, it was impossible now. They had no hope of scraping the money for transport together now. They were stranded in London. She felt the child kick inside her. Her beloved time bomb.

It was eight months since they had come to London. November. A year since Morfin and Marvolo had been incarcerated. Marvolo would have returned to the cottage. She hadn't thought about him for a long time.

Late December, Merope poured the last dregs of Amortentia onto the spoon. Tom took it without question, as he had for the past ten months. To him, it was medicine. Something to stop illness setting in, although it didn't seem to work very well. He still took it, though, thinking it would hurt Merope's feelings if he didn't. It never occurred to him that Merope never took it herself.

The last dose. Merope wasn't terribly worried. Of course, she had some dark little doubts that she tried not to think about. But she knew she hadn't fallen in love with a man who would leave his pregnant wife. Not now.

Work generally cancelled on Christmas Day, she sat with Tom in their room. They had a twig packed into the bottom of a broken bottle with newspaper that stood under the windowframe. Tom had hung particularly gaudy bits of rubbish on it.

"We always had a tree at home." he said to Merope, sitting against the wall with his arm around her, stroking her swollen abdomen. "A big one. The gardener would chop one down out of the forest and it stood in the hall. It still smelt of the forest, that sweet smell of fresh pine needles. When I was a child I'd help the maid decorate it. Never bothered when I got older, of course. My father's parents and my mother's sister, and her husband and their children came to stay sometimes. Then we'd all have dinner together." He inhaled quickly, almost a gasp. "A goose. It was always a goose, from the Proctor farm. Stuffed with herbs and served with the best gravy. And potatoes. Roasted in with the goose so the fat soaked into them and made them crisp on the outside and soft inside. And wine. Always the best red wine, a good balance between dry and fruity. And Christmas pudding. With brandy butter and cream." He moaned softly. Merope closed her eyes. She was salivating, could almost taste the food, even though she'd never eaten it.

Their dinner was a husk of stale bread each, although Tom characteristically took two bits of his and passed the rest over. Merope tried to refuse but he wouldn't eat it.

"I'm not hungry. If you don't eat it it'll be a waste." He watched with a pained expression as she chewed and swallowed. She felt guilty doing it but preferred to take his words literally. It was also easier not to think about how it might not be entirely his choice.

Tom kept shifting that night, waking Merope up every few minutes. Finally she whispered, "Can't you sleep?"

"What do you think it'll be like when the baby comes?" he answered.

"Lovely." she replied firmly, and would hear no more of it.

"I love you." he said, but there was something strange about the way he said it. Like he was almost trying to convince himself. It sent a shiver of horror down her spine. It took a long time for her to fall asleep. Listening to Tom's breathing, it seemed that he was the same.


	18. A Rude Awakening

A RUDE AWAKENING

The room was dark on the morning of Boxing Day. The wooden board blocked out most of the light, and in winter there wasn't much light to start with. It was the cold that woke Merope up. She rolled over clumsily, her joints stiff and her pregnancy cumbersome.

She stared into her husband's beautiful face. Oilstained and gaunt but still beautiful. His arms were wrapped around himself, trying to conserve his own body heat. He had let go of her at some point in the night.

His eyes opened. Still the same bright blue they'd always been. They stared blindly for a few seconds before they focused on hers.

He closed his eyes. He opened them again.

"Merope." he said flatly. She smiled. He didn't return it. She kissed him gently on the lips. He turned his head away and hugged himself more tightly.

"What?" she said, hurt. Tom screwed up his face, shaking it.

"I just had a bad night." Wordlessly he got out of the bed and began dressing for his day at work. He wouldn't look at her when she stared at him. She only caught him sneaking glances at her when she thought she wasn't looking and every time he did he looked scared. He was pale, his eyes wide, his pupils dilated. He shut the door quietly behind him.

It was cold. There was a deflated atmosphere in the streets of London after the festivities of Christmas. Life restarted. Everyone was trussed up in coats and woollen underclothes. Merope only had a thin tweed coat that Tom had given her. It wasn't designed for the middle of winter.

The day passed like a dream. Merope grazed her fingers on the thread a few times. She hadn't done that since her first week but her mind was elsewhere. Her sense of nervousness, and then outright paranoia, grew until she could hardly bear to sit still. Everyone else seemed too calm, working mechanically at their looms.

She couldn't take it any more. She slipped off her stool and moved carefully through the rows towards the door. She tried not to be noticed but it seemed like every head in the room was watching her. She collected her coat from the empty cloakroom and set off through the streets of London.

She didn't know where she was going. At first she set off in the direction of Tom's saw mill, but then realised they would never let her in anyway. She changed direction, heading towards home.

Their neighbour's room was empty. It was the first time Merope had seen it without at least one of the three sons lounging about, but then, she'd never come home in the middle of the day either.

She pushed open the room into her own room and breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was there, just as she had left it that morning. She smiled. Only stupid paranoia. Nothing to worry about.

Sudden footsteps in the next room and the door opened. With a shock she saw Tom standing there. He saw her and it registered on his face as if he'd seen some terrifying monster. He slowly slid into the room, keeping his back to the wall.

"What are you doing here?" he said. His voice was croaky, his eyes flitting around the room nervously.

"I could ask you the same thing."

He didn't answer her, just continued moving around the room until he reached the opposite wall. Merope slowly shifted to stand in front of the door. Tom carefully bent down, keeping his eyes on her. His hands scrabbled at the floor. He tore one of his nails in his haste and winced in pain, but didn't look down. His fingers grasped the two last bits of paper. Merope choked. His other hand apprehensively picked up her wand. Merope had put it there months before for safekeeping, never using it much in day to day life.

He straightened up. He pushed the paper into a pocket. He gingerly held the wand between the thumb and forefingers of each hand.

In the second before he did it Merope realised what he was going to do. She lurched forwards with a cry but it was too late. Tom grasped both ends tightly and bent it backwards. It snapped, and to Merope it seemed almost like a physical pain. Then it was gone, just a fractured stick of ash. The unicorn tail hair fell out and landed on the dusty floor.

The spell was broken. Tom strode towards the door.

"Where are you going?" Her voice sounded an octave higher.

"Home." He didn't look at her.

"Well, wait and I'll come with you, you can't just leave, just like that, with nothing."

"I thought your family would kill you if you went home." He laughed bitterly. "Of course, that was all just lies, wasn't it? Lies. Just like everything you told me. Lies about how you loved me. "

"I do love you."

"Yeah, that was why you did this to me! Drag me to this horrible little hovel, destroy my life! What are you, some kind of succubus? Is _that_ our demon child?" He looked down.

"But I_do_ love you! Fine, I love you enough to go home. I don't_care_ if I'm killed! We'll go and we'll _tell_ them we're in love and if they murder us for it, so be it –"

"There's only enough for one ticket." Tom said, interrupting her. He shrugged, one sharp clenching of his shoulders. He made for the door. Merope stepped back, pressed her elbows against the doorframe.

"You can't do this."

He pulled her arms away mechanically and tried to step through but she grabbed onto his arms, digging her fingernails in. He pulled her hands off as if he were brushing off leeches but she just took hold again.

"You'd really do this, leave your only child to rot?" She sighed, swallowed back her tears. "You don't care about me. Fine. But wait until she's born, please, please, just do that. Take her with you. Don't leave her here with… with me." _Because I would wreck her life._

He ignored her, kept mechanically pushing her away. He wouldn't look at her, but she looked at him and saw the crushing guilt in his face, and she felt dreadful for putting him through it all. She let go. He glanced at her face for just a second, then turned and walked out of the door. He didn't look back.

She could have followed him, but there was no point. He would have run away from her. In her state Merope couldn't possibly hope to keep up with him. Even if she could, Tom would board the train with his paper and Merope would be left standing on the platform.

She sank down against the wall, wrapping her arms around her head. She didn't think about what would happen next, knowing it was nothing good.

* * *

The streets outside were cold. Tom hugged his arms against his skeletal body and wished he had his coat. Merope had it now. Just like Merope had taken everything, even his mind. 

His head felt clearer than it had done in months. Before, his every thought had been saturated with Merope. He couldn't even look at another girl without thinking about how Merope was prettier, couldn't concentrate on his work or on their finances without pausing to think about her every few seconds. Everywhere he went in his mind, she was there. It had seemed so normal at the time, but retrospectively it seemed like the past ten months had passed in a drug induced haze.

It was too much to think about at that moment. The wound was still sore. He didn't want to think of Merope. Only of the physical comforts that home promised. A hot, cleansing bath. A warm, soft bed. The food. Roast lamb and gravy, spotted dick and cream. Sweet red wine and bread baked fresh. Tom slowed until he stopped in the street, staring into empty space imagining it before shaking himself and resuming walking.

Thinking about the Merope, the tramp's daughter who had somehow stolen a chunk of his life, would wait until he felt up to dealing with it.


	19. Rent Day

RENT DAY

Rent day. The landlord walked through his block.

People hated him, but the most they could do about it was glower at him as they handed over their hard-earned money. He hated them back, lying filthy on their sticks of furniture. Everything that was wrong about London.

He left the room with the woman and her multitude of sons and went into the one with the young couple. There'd always been something odd about those two. When they'd first arrived the man had seemed so _upper class_. He couldn't understand what he was doing with the base, dirty little girl who scuttled around him.

It was the girl whom he faced, sitting hunched in the corner, her dirty face streaked with tear lines, her arms wrapped around her swollen abdomen. He glanced down at the sheet. _Riddle_.

"Rent?" he said shortly. The girl looked up slowly. Her eyes looked glazed, dead.

"I'm sorry, I haven't got any." She spoke in such a quiet voice the landlord had trouble catching what she said.

"No rent, no stay, love."

Her eyes widened and she began shaking her head quickly, gasping for breath. "But… I've nowhere to go. Please, just give me a week and I can get you the money, I promise."

He shook his head shortly. "I've heard that so many times before. Wouldn't want it getting out that I'm a soft touch, do I?" He turned to go. "I'll give you two hours to get yourself out. Anything left in here after that is my property."

He ignored the sound of slobbery sobbing as he passed through the room next door. The three sons exchanged glances.

* * *

Tom had no money left, save a few odd pennies. He winced at the memory of standing at the ticket office, digging low-worth coins out of pockets to get as much money on the counter as possible. Even so, there was still only enough money to get to Leeds. The clerk had slid the ticket across the table slowly, wrinkling his nose. 

Nobody wanted to share a compartment with him. People came in at the stations only to turn around and walk back out as soon as they saw him, a filthy, skeletal, stinking mess sitting hunched in the corner. He wished they wouldn't. Every time the door opened the little bit of warmth inside the compartment vanished.

It was only a few hours into the journey that he began thinking about how he'd become something he'd always hated and scorned. A man who'd run off with a poor girl, got her pregnant and deserted her. Tom shuddered to himself and shook his head. He wasn't like that. He'd just been so scared of Merope, too scared to stay any longer in her reach. As soon as he got home he'd arrange to have money sent to her, every two weeks perhaps. More than they'd been living on for the past ten months. Then perhaps one day the child could come and live at the Riddle house. His mother wouldn't approve, but then he'd done a lot of things she wouldn't approve of…

He was glad of his lack of company at Leeds. He crawled underneath the seat to try and avoid the conductor seeing him. If there had been anyone else, this wouldn't have worked, but as it was the conductor simply glanced through the window and, seeing nobody there, moved on.

It was dark when the train finally got into York. Tom stepped off the train and didn't know what to do. He sat on a bench for a few minutes but began to shiver violently in the cold December air. Standing back up, he started to walk out of the station.

It was a strange sensation, seeing the streets of York again when the ones in London had become so familiar. All the shops were shut and he passed few people. Those he did pass seemed to slide their eyes over him, not wanting to look and make the ragged, starving young man their responsibility.

He walked for a few minutes not knowing where he was going, before realising he'd set himself on the road towards York Minster. He'd gone there with his parents each Christmas, as they deemed themselves above singing hymns alongside the farmers in the humble chapel in Little Hangleton. They would have been there only the day before.

The cathedral loomed in front of him, a dark, pointed outline against the clear night sky. There was nobody around. The silence seemed deafening and absolute, the cold piercing and Tom began to worry that he'd escaped Merope's clutches and dragged himself back to Yorkshire only to freeze to death a few miles from home.

Then he turned, to see in the distance the faint glow in the distance of the police station. He remembered with a shock how his father had campaigned against the move to have it kept open all night. A waste of taxpayer's money, he'd said.

The policeman on duty was bored, sprawled with a cup of coffee reading a novel. He looked up in irritation as the unwelcome vagrant stumbled through the door, letting the heat out, then the vagrant's face registered and his eyes widened as he looked first from Tom to the now-faded photographs pinned to the wall of the missing Riddle boy.

* * *

Merope was walking for no purpose other than to keep a little warmer than she would be sitting still. All her belongings – pointless things, like cooking pots - were gathered together and tied up in a blanket. She'd bound the pieces of her wand together with a strip of cloth torn from the shirt Tom had given her. She hadn't dared to try to use it yet. Her locket hung underneath her clothes, a precaution against her bundle being stolen.

She'd waited for the crushing, defeating wave of misery and it hadn't come. All that was left was a bleak, desolate feeling of emptiness. Tom was gone. He wouldn't come back. All she could do now was survive.

She was walking with the vague idea of walking straight out of London. Maybe out in the countryside it wouldn't be so bad. She'd slept rough before. Granted, it hadn't been in December and she hadn't been pregnant. And it had only been for one night. But anything had to be better than lying exposed on the streets of London.

The baby kicked inside her and she patted her abdomen gently. She had to get through this, for the sake of the child. If it wasn't for the child she would have sat down and waited for whatever suitable punishment she deserved. But the child deserved a life, even if she didn't.

Merope knew she was going to die. In some ways she even welcomed death, a final rest in which she could forget all the terrible things she'd done, and all her naïve dreams that had come to nothing. She was too weak to survive giving birth, too malnourished, too tired. Maybe if Tom had stayed she would have found the strength to pull through it… but he was gone.

All she was now was a sinking ship, slowly moving towards the harbour. Nothing would save the ship, but there was a chance its cargo could be redeemed.

She was in a part of London she'd never seen before, having crossed the Thames for the first time a short while earlier. She stumbled round a corner and for one wild second thought she had indeed managed to walk out of London, but then realised it was just an oasis of green in the maze of streets.

There was still enough light to see the lake in the distance, with a thin coating of ice. There was nobody there. Deciding that she'd have more chance of being left alone in the green oasis than in the dusty streets, Merope settled herself behind the biggest tree she could find. Wondered how cold the night would be. Hoped she'd survive.

* * *

The familiar big black car slowed and stopped outside the police station. Tom watched it, huddled in a blanket the policeman had got from one of the cells. A moment later, he saw his mother and father rush out of the back doors and barge in. They let the heat out.

His father briefly thanked the policeman, as his mother grasped his wrist and pulled him to his feet, wincing at how bony it had become. He was ushered into the car and sat between his parents. His father signalled to the chauffeur to drive.

His mother asked a lot of questions about where he'd been and what he'd done and why he'd done it but Tom was too tired to think about forming answers properly and just shrugged.

"Leave him, Elizabeth, he's exhausted. Wait until he's slept and got a decent meal inside him. Then he can go about explaining what the hell he thinks he's been doing."

She said nothing else after that. The low, familiar hum of the engine was comforting and Tom drifted to sleep, leaning against his mother like he was seven years old again.


	20. Everything Dealt With

EVERYTHING DEALT WITH

In her dream Merope was with her baby daughter. She held the child close to her and felt their warm skin touching together. Tom was there too. Then the world jarred and the cold rushed back. The child was gone, and so was Tom.

She was huddled against a tree trunk, her limbs tucked as close to her body as possible, the blanket around her shoulders. The dim morning light was starting to filter through the buildings that surrounded the park. There was frost on the grass and in Merope's hair. She moved to brush it out but as soon as she moved a new wave of cold ran across her shoulders.

She wanted to go back to sleep, back to the warm place in her mind but knew it was pointless trying. Instead she slowly moved into a standing position. The cold made her whimper but she kept moving. Her fingers were stiff and didn't seem to work properly, so tying everything back into her blanket took three times as long as it should have done.

Closing her hands into fists inside her sleeves, Merope started to walk out of the park, still painfully slowly. All she could think of was finding some warm corner to hide in. That was all she had to aim for. Even food seemed ridiculously out of her reach.

Back in the streets, a small pub caught her eye. It was squashed between two nondescript blocks, sunk a few feet behind them, as if it were hiding.

She walked over to it. Looked around. Nobody was watching her. Indeed, nobody seemed to even see her anymore.

She pushed the door open, stepped in and immediately had a shock of both relief and crushing regret. Because it was the same place she'd Flooed to, months earlier. It seemed like fate that she'd find it, only now when all was already lost.

* * *

The sheets had been white pristine clean, but once Tom had finished sleeping in them they were streaked with grey and brown. It didn't matter. They would be clean by the next night.

He hadn't had any food before collapsing into bed the previous night. Now he crawled out of bed, still dressed in his old rags and slowly crept downstairs. Casting furtive glances about him, he slipped into the pantry.

He'd never been in the small, cool room before. Now he couldn't understand why he'd paid it so little attention in the past. It was early in the morning, neither the cook or the maid were awake yet. He had the place to himself.

The bread was first. It was a fresh loaf, wrapped up lovingly in brown paper. He thought for a moment about going into the kitchen and finding a knife to cut it with but immediately abandoned the idea. It would take too long. Instead he ripped a chunk off from the corner, bit into it and almost whimpered at the taste, the texture, the feeling of it sliding down his throat. He fumbled around for a few minutes, still swallowing down mouthfuls of hardly-chewed bread, close to tears with frustration at all the cans the cook seemed to like.

Then he found the butter, tucked away at the bottom where it was coolest, next to the cheese. He unwrapped the greaseproof paper delicately. It had already been broken into but there was still a lot left. He scooped his filthy fingers into it, the butter sinking under his nails, and licked it off his hands. He ate half of the rest, the taste of salty goodness spreading all around his mouth, before moving on, ripping the lids off the cake tins with buttergreased fingers. There was three quarters of a fruit loaf and half of a chocolate fudge cake and he went for the chocolate fudge cake, using the side of his hand to gauge huge chunks out. He bit and swallowed, hardly chewing, until his hands and face were smeared with chocolate and his stomach and throat hurt but he carried on until finally he felt dizzy and nauseous and suddenly in one great surge his throat burned as the lumps of carbohydrate and fat came falling out of his mouth and he was left coughing on the floor, trying to get rid of the taste of acid in his mouth.

"Have you quite finished?" said a cold voice behind him. Tom guiltily turned around to see his mother standing behind him, her mouth in a thin tight line. Tom looked down and finally nodded, in answer to her question.

"Sarah's running you a bath. After that I suppose she'll have to clean up this disgusting mess you've made." For a moment her cold mask slipped and her face curled in anger. "You had better have a good explanation for all of this. If this is just a result of gross inconsideration on your part, then that will make you such a sorry excuse for a son that I'm not sure you'll even be welcome in this house anymore. But nevermind, you can go back to your whore." She turned abruptly and left, leaving Tom kneeling on the floor in front of his own vomit.

He pressed his hands against his face, slowly breathed in and out. There was still a sizable portion of the cake left. He took one last bite.

* * *

If she'd thought the curious, pitying looks were bad last time, they were nothing to what she got now. Walking into the Leaky Cauldron, heavily pregnant, with her bundled blanket and filthy, ragged clothes, Merope could hardly blame the people for staring.

She could go home from here. A handful of Floo powder was a few knuts, nobody would grudge her it. But there was nothing at home for her except pain and death and where would that leave her child?

Once again, she found herself waiting stupidly next to the brick wall outside the pub for someone to open it for her. Her wand was gone. Eventually it was a young witch, wrapped up warmly in furs, who openly stared at Merope, sitting hunched up on the floor.

Diagon Alley was busy, full of people taking advantage of the low post-Christmas prices. Merope wandered aimlessly, watching the people hurry by, absorbed in their perfect, happy lives. The world could be so wonderful. Merope was sad with the knowledge that she'd never experience it properly. She stopped for a second, letting her mind race for a few seconds, imagining watching her daughter grow up into a wonderful, beautiful, clever young woman, so much more than her mother had ever been. Then her mind ground to a halt and she was left shivering in the middle of Diagon Alley, reminded of everything she'd been denied.

Her hand clasped around her locket. No more wallowing in self pity. She still had a purpose; to deliver her child safely into the world. After that there was nothing she could do.

She started to walk more quickly, heading towards Knockturn Alley.

* * *

Tom had sat in the bathtub for over two hours, meticulously scrubbing every square inch of his body clean. The water was black by the time he finally got out. He towelled himself dry and slowly put on the fresh clothes laid out for him on a chair. They were just an old flannel shirt and trousers but they seemed like the attire of a lord after what Tom had been living in for the past ten months.

He slowly wiped the steam off the mirror with the towel and looked at himself. He almost looked normal again, clean and dressed in clean clothes. His face still looked bony, his eyes bloodshot, his teeth yellow and his hair in need of cutting but it was still Tom Riddle of the Riddle family that looked back at him. Not the worthless waif he'd been.

He slowly walked downstairs. One step at a time, with socks on.

His parents were waiting for him in the parlour, sitting side by side. Tom slowly lowered himself into a chair opposite them. His mother poured herself out a cup of tea, added the milk and slowly stirred it in. It was only when she'd finally settled back in her chair with it that his father finally spoke.

"So, Thomas, what happened?"

* * *

Merope placed her locket on the counter. She said nothing. She didn't need to.

The man – old, gnarled and evil-smelling, but still significantly better off than her – picked it up wordlessly and turned it over in his hands. He opened it carefully, picked up a magnifying glass and scrutinised it carefully. He placed it back on the counter. "Ten galleons."

"It's worth fifty times that." Merope said flatly. She wasn't protesting. How could she? She was merely stating what they both knew.

The man shrugged one shoulder slightly. "Take it or leave it, darling."

Merope held his gaze for a few moments. Trying to find some shred of remorse in him, but there wasn't. Finally she looked down and nodded slightly. The man went to the till and counted out ten galleons slowly, almost tauntingly. Merope stared down at the locket on the counter one last time, and then it was gone, replaced with a few coins.

She could stretch it out. It would buy her food for a week, at least. Her child would come within a week, she knew it.

* * *

"I don't know what she did. All I know is that for months and months… it was like I couldn't think. Like I was living in a dream. Like there was just this big fog in my mind. But then the fog suddenly went and I realised what I was doing and I got scared, really scared. And all I could think of was getting away from her. So… I did. And I came home."

They were not impressed by his explanation. Tom sighed and looked at the floor. "She's pregnant. I have to send her money. I can't leave her like that, we barely managed on a double income. She'd die without me."

His mother inhaled sharply. "She's pregnant? Do you realise how much harder that will make it to get the marriage annulled?" She rolled her eyes up, thinking quickly. "We can say he was drugged at the time of marriage. It sounds like he was anyway, all that 'fog' in his mind. And that she's mad, coming from that family that shouldn't be hard to pass."

His father nodded. "Ten pounds a month should be enough to keep her from trying to come back here and causing trouble."

"I didn't marry her." Tom said quietly.

His mother stared at him. "What?"

"I didn't marry her."

She seemed torn between relief and disgust at him, disgust that he'd, even in a drugged haze, try to build a life with a girl without properly joining with her first. Finally relief won through. "I suppose it's all right then."

"But I still need to send her money. Whatever she is, it's my child. I can't just leave her."

His father sucked air in through his teeth and grudgingly nodded. "I'll sort it out on Monday." He abruptly stood up and walked from the room. The discussion seemed to have ended. Everything dealt with.


	21. The Hour Of Need

Apologies for the spasmodic updates. It's partly due to the fact that I've had a shedload of exams and coursework and things to do, partly because I've suddenly gone off and started writing this original thing, but mostly because I'm just quite lazy.

THE HOUR OF NEED

The first thing Merope did with her ten galleons was convert it into sickles. She then concealed the one hundred and seventy silver coins in various places all over her clothing. A few in her socks. A few in each pocket of the coat Tom had left her. The rest went in secret pockets and folds she'd sewn into her clothes, over time.

Food was worth more in the muggle economy than it was in the wizarding one, so Merope went shopping in Diagon Alley. The food on offer there tended to be better than what she'd been used to from the muggle marketplaces. It was fresher, as it was Flooed straight from the farms, instead of having to travel for days to reach London. However, those at the lowest prices tended to have been magically replicated a lot, and once a loaf of bread had been recreated as seven loaves, it lost its flavour and goodness.

She didn't like spending time in Diagon Alley. There were far fewer utter failures in the wizarding community. In the muggle streets of London she could sit quietly and people would pass her by without a second glance. There were so many of her kind, life's losers. If she tried to sit outside the Leaky Cauldron people passing would stare and whisper. Instead she spent her time alone, sitting on a bench in St. James's Park, watching the geese squabble. She'd sit completely still with Tom's coat wrapped around her, feeling the heat slowly drain out of her body, until she could almost feel that she'd been frozen into a statue, before shaking herself back into life and going for a walk to get her blood flowing again.

* * *

The house was empty the next morning. Tom's father was at work, his mother at a coffee morning, the maid on her day off. Inspecting his wardrobe, Tom found that all his clothes had been freshly washed, ironed and hung up according to colours. He picked out his best shirt, waistcoat and trousers and laid them out on his bed, before running himself a bath. He sat in the steaming water, scrubbing every inch of his body until his skin tingled.

Dressed and smelling like a gentleman, Tom called himself a taxi from the telephone downstairs and sat for a few minutes in the empty parlour before temptation got the better of him and he investigated the pantry. His mess from the previous day had been cleaned up. He was more discreet this time, cutting a slice of bread and spreading it thickly with butter and blackcurrant preserve. The taxi arrived while he was still eating it. The driver wrinkled his nose as Tom climbed into the car with it still in his hand, but said nothing.

He paid the driver in Great Hangleton and set off towards the barbers. His mother had dragged him there every month when he was a boy to have his hair trimmed to an appropriate length. He paid for a haircut and a shave and stepped out looking even smarter. He paused at the florists to buy the biggest bouquet of flowers they had on sale. It was a magnificent affair, a huge armful of red roses, wrapped in the most expensive paper.

Walking up Cecilia's lane was an apprehensive affair. Twice Tom slowed and almost turned around and walked away, roses in hand but both times strengthened his resolve and carried on walking. He rang the doorbell and waited on the doorstep, picking at his fingers as he heard the footsteps inside approach.

It was her mother. Mrs Ballingston looked at the nervous young man with his enormous bunch of roses on her doorstep with little amusement. "You'll be wanting Cecilia, I presume."

"Yes. I… yes. Thankyou, ma'am." Tom stuttered as she shut the door on him. He listened to her footsteps walking away. There seemed to be an endless silence, then finally lighter, softer footfalls that got louder as they approached. There was a click, and the door slowly opened.

Involuntarily, Tom inhaled sharply as he saw her. Her hair didn't fall down her back any more; she'd had it cut to just below her ears, where it stayed close to her head in little blonde curls. Gone was the elaborate clothing she'd always liked to dress in, replaced with a plain blue skirt and a shapeless, dark grey top. Her face was hard, her eyes piercing.

This wasn't the girlish, submissive doll he'd been engaged to.

"You." she said, unsmiling, shaking her head slightly. "I heard you were back. I wondered if you'd come and see me."

Tom smiled weakly and offered her the roses. She glanced down at them but didn't take them. "I never did like roses, Tom. I find the scent sickly. And I remember I told you this on a few occasions but you never learned, did you?"

Tom's smile faded, pulled the roses back and let them hang limply by his side. "I'm sorry."

"It's not really that you should be apologising for, though, is it?"

She was _so_ beautiful. Tom took a deep breath. "I can explain everything. Please. Can… can I come in?"

For a second she seemed to start to move backwards to let him through, but then her eyes narrowed and she shook her head. "No, you can't, Tom. There is no way you can explain what you did, so there's no point." She ran a hand through her hair and seemed to grip at her skull. "Have you any idea how much you hurt me? A week before our wedding, you suddenly run off with some tramp? And what you wrote in that letter! _If I had not met someone so much better…_ it nearly destroyed me. I kept thinking, how dreadful and repulsive must I be, for someone like _her_ to be _so much better_? Her, who beat me into unconsciousness in my own house and left me tied up in my own wardrobe, suddenly you loved _her_."

"No, I love you. I love you so much. I never stopped loving you, never. Never. And I promise, if you give me another chance, I'll give you everything you ever want. I promise." Tom was aware of the note of desperation in his voice but couldn't help it.

Cecilia shrugged. "I don't care any more, Tom. I wasn't going to wait in hope of you coming back forever. I'm courting someone else now."

Tom choked slightly. His mouth opened and closed a few times and his face contorted in pain. Finally he managed to say, "Who?"

"Frank Pratt."

"As in the butcher's boy?" Tom stared at her, shocked. This was, after all, Cecilia Ballingston he was talking to. How could she be courting some bloody-handed butcher?

"Yes. The butcher's boy. You know, someone who's actually earning their own living instead of depending on daddy's estate? Someone who actually likes me for who I am, instead of the nice little baby spawning wife that I could be."

"I never –"

"Yes, you did. You never listened to me. When I said I wanted to learn about electronics you just laughed at me. Frank isn't like that. He's five times the man you could ever be. Of course, my father isn't happy about it." Her face twisted darkly. "When I started courting you he was _thrilled_. Sometimes I think… you and I, it was all just a big plot devised by him." Her hands curled by her side as she spoke. "Sorry, Tom, but there's nothing for you here." She looked at him one last time, smiled in a way that could almost be a grimace, and shut the door.

Tom clenched his fist around the stems of the roses he still held in one hand and felt the pulp yield under the force. He slowly turned and began to walk back down the lane.

* * *

Merope mostly had the park to herself. There was a couple who'd come a few hours ago, trussed up in winter coats, scarves and gloves. They occupied the rival bench, eating sandwiches together. When they'd finished they threw the crusts on the ground for the geese to eat. As soon as their backs were turned Merope moved, falling to the ground from her own bench to snatch the crusts from the ground and plunged them into the pockets of Tom's coat. She congratulated herself back at the bench, as she pressed them, one after the other, into her mouth. This was a free gift, so she could eat it quickly. Crumbs of potted meat still clung to the edges. She'd had had to get up to pee six times in the last hour, although each time she dragged her freezing body from the bench to go and squat in the bushes, she only passed a tiny amount.

She held a tiny sliver of meat in her mouth. Every few seconds she'd bite a corner, just a corner, and let the flavour released diffuse around her mouth. The small things in life. It was the small things she'd miss. Twilight was starting to fall on the park. It would soon be completely dark. Another day would soon be over. She finally swallowed the tasteless, overchewed piece of flesh in her mouth.

It was a slow feeling of pain, that crept up on her without her realising before suddenly she was immersed in it and it took her a few seconds, a few seconds of uncertainty that seemed to extend for hours until the rush of realisation and fear hit her in one huge wave.

She sat for a few minutes waiting, but nothing else happened. She felt her bump tentatively. Nothing seemed to have changed, but how could she tell? She hadn't planned it to happen like this. For one thing, it was supposed to be daylight. The night was creeping up fast. She imagined for a moment staying, trying to have her baby alone in the cold darkness. It wouldn't work. She would lose warmth too fast and die of cold, leaving her baby to die too.

There was the Leaky Cauldron. Merope thought about going there, throwing herself on the mercy of the people there. They would help her, but they would ask awful, prying questions. Being magic folk, they'd know of Amortentia. They'd understand exactly what she was trying to hide if she tried to talk about her husband unexpectedly leaving her. She couldn't face their judgement.

Or maybe she was wrong. Maybe she'd just imagined the pain. Maybe it wasn't happening. Merope sat hugging herself on the bench, waiting for some kind of confirmation. Tentatively she slid one hand under the waistband of her skirt and into her underwear. Her fingers touched something wet and slippery. Retrieving her hand, she squinted at it in the dim light. It was tinged with red and brown liquid.

She wiped her fingers on her skirt, the tears coming to her eyes. She clasped her hands together, offering a silent prayer to Slytherin, hoping that He would watch over her in her hour of need.


	22. Death's Heavy Presence

DEATH'S HEAVY PRESENCE

Merope was standing in front of a house. It wouldn't have been a door she would have knocked on ordinarily, being behind a set of iron railings and gates that were mercifully unlocked, but she had been directed to it. They had said the people here would help her.

She had made a resolve in the park that she would have her child indoors, even if she had to knock on every door in London to do so. The baby was worth more than to die in the cold simply because she was too shameful.

She'd started to walk back towards the Thames as the first snowflakes started to fall. Most doors were slammed in her face, some even before she had spoken. But eventually some kindly soul had directed her down Vauxhall road, and the large, dark house that stood on a corner. By the time she'd walked the mile or so to the house the snow had melted through her clothes and soaked her to the skin. She'd had two more pains on the way, forcing her to drop to her knees and shake softly to herself.

Tentatively, Merope rapped three times on the door with the brass knocker. She waited a few moments before she finally heard footsteps. A thin-faced girl answered the door, and squinted at her with narrow eyes. "What do you want?" she snapped, not well pleased with the ragged young woman standing before her.

"I'm having a baby." Merope whispered.

The girl took a few seconds to react, then gaped at her, suddenly taking in the pregnant bulge of Merope's front. She glanced behind Merope, into the cold darkness. Then she took hold of Merope's shoulder and directed her through the door "Come on, get inside."

Once in the porch, Merope was left standing dripping while the girl ran off and returned with a large grey-haired woman who listened to the girl and then took Merope's hand and pulled her through the house. Glancing into rooms off the central corridor, Merope saw children and teenagers sitting and playing games, who stared straight back at her. The woman pushed her up a flight of rickety wooden stairs and into a room with three beds. Two little girls sat on a bed playing Cat's Cradle, who looked up in surprise as Merope came though the door.

"Go on, shoo!" the woman snapped at the girls. They ran out of the room and the woman turned back to Merope with a smile. "My name's Mrs. Smith. But you can call me Doris. Lets see, you can have this bed to lie on, Sophie'll just have to sleep with Anne tonight."

"Thankyou." Merope whispered, slowly easing herself onto the bed. The girl who'd answered the door came slowly into the room. Doris clapped her hands on the girl's shoulders. "This 'ere is Vic Cole, absolute lifesaver of a girl. Vic, be a pet and get me some towels, hot water and that oilskin that's been 'anging in the cellar for god knows 'ow long." The girl nodded and scuttled out of the room.

Doris turned back to Merope. "So, what's your name, you poor love? How old are you? Is this your first one?"

"Merope Riddle." Merope said quietly. "Eighteen. Yes, it's my first."

"Don't worry about it, pet. Women have been 'aving babies for centuries. And don't you worry about making yourself any kind of inconvenience either. Everyone deserves a good place to have their babies and whatever you've done to get yourself into this mess, well, that ain't none of my business now, is it?" She smiled. Merope stared dumbly back, then twist her face in pain as her body clenched again. Doris laid a hand on her abdomen, gently poking with her thumb. "Not long now, pet, and you'll 'ave a beautiful little baby. What'll you call 'im?"

"Or her."

"Or her, yes. Though I've a feeling you've got a little boy in there."

Merope was silent for a while, thinking. Eventually she answered, staring up at the cracked ceiling. "If it is a girl I want to call her Madeleine, after my mother. And a boy, he would be Tom." The tears welled up in her eyes but she blinked them away and carried on. "Tom, after his father. And Marvolo, after my father."

Vic came back into the room, two towels slung over one shoulder, an oilskin over the other and holding a bucket of steaming water to her chest. She set them down by the bed.

"Now, Merope, could you just get up for a moment for me so I can get this oilskin down? Last birthing woman we 'ad here completely ruined a mattress, s'just generally a messy business if you get what I mean." Doris carefully soaked one of the towels , wrung it out and pressed the hot towel onto Merope's abdomen.

"Hold that there, pet, it'll help with the pain."

Merope nodded, rubbing the heat against her skin before the wave of clenching pain came over her and she whimpered, grasping the side of the mattress with one fist.

How many hours left to go? How many hours before the baby would be born and she would die? She could feel Death's heavy presence in the room, waiting to have her in its clutches. "I'm scared." she breathed.

"No need to be scared. Like I said, women bin 'avin babies for centuries and a good few of those women were 'ere with me."

Merope didn't answer, staring up at the ceiling again. She felt the pain bubbling up inside her again and this time cried out as it crashed over her. She felt a wetness spreading from between her legs, pooling beneath her on the oilskin.

"Not long now." Doris said.

Then it was just the wait, as things happened inside her that she didn't understand and it felt like a monster was ripping her apart from the inside. She screamed as the pains came and gasped for breath when they stopped. She didn't complain. How could she? It was fitting for her baby to arrive like this, fitting for her to end like this. Her final punishment.

Dimly she registered Vic leaning against one of the walls. Doris was looking between her legs, something that at any other time would have seemed improper.

"She's opening. Push, girl! We'll 'ave this thing out soon."

Merope tried to obey, but it seemed like every last bit of energy had left her, seeped out of her skin and evaporated into the air. She could feel sharp, stretching, ripping pain inside her. Less profound than the other pain, but no less distressing.

"Keep going! I can see his little head!"

Once more. She could manage once more. Merope clenched herself, holding it for as long as she could and suddenly the pressure inside her stopped and she could hear a baby screaming.

There was blood – so much blood – the baby was covered in it. Slime and blood and so, so beautiful.

"A little boy!" Doris was smiling at her. "Tom, then, I s'pose."

This little purple wet thing. His eyes were tightly closed, screaming and screaming. Merope pulled him up to one of her swollen breasts. He stopped screaming then and just lay on her chest, moving his little arms. Moving his little fingers.

Doris wound string around the sinewy, bloody cord that still connected the baby with the bloody mass that had come with him. She yanked the string tight and Merope cried out, imagining pain for the baby but he took no notice. He was only interested in her.

She was gently wiping the blood from her baby's eyes when Doris tried to take him away from her and she started screaming.

"Get away! You're not taking him!"

Doris backed away. "Sorry, pet, but he needs to get cleaned up. You too. There'll be no number of nasty bugs about."

Merope slowly nodded. She didn't stop her taking him the second time. He was returned a few minutes later, wrapped in a cloth.

He knew when he was back with his mother. He reached out his little fingers to touch her skin again. And then he opened his eyes. Little blue eyes, that stared right back into hers. The most beautiful eyes Merope had ever seen.

It broke her heart to know she would never see them again after that night.

Maybe she could beat death. Maybe it didn't have to be like that. This baby, this tiny little perfect beautiful person, he needed her like nobody had ever needed her before.

Tears blurred her vision. She stared at her baby through water. She made no sound, just lay, completely motionless. Even though all she was doing was lying she could still feel the energy seeping out of her. She felt weaker by the second.

It was getting colder. Colder and colder and colder. She wanted to reach out to pull a blanket over herself but it just seemed too hard. Her muscles didn't work properly.

She lifted one hand, even that small movement seeming akin to running up a mountain, and rested it on the baby's head. He had tiny black strands of hair already.

_Be clever. Be beautiful. Don't let anyone tell you what to do. Be your own person. Be the best._

She closed her eyes.


	23. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Merope Gaunt died of exhaustion and blood loss, aged eighteen. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the graveyard of a small London chapel. The vicar said a few words over her and left.

After his sentence in Azkaban, Morfin returned to the cottage to find his father decaying in a chair holding a bottle of whiskey. He would not speak to another human until his nephew came to see him, fifteen years later.

After numerous letters to his old landlord were ignored, Tom Riddle travelled to London to try and find Merope. He asked the landlord, the woman who had lived in the room next door, and the mill where she had worked. None of them knew anything, in spite of the bribes Tom tried giving them. 

London was a big place and Tom knew she could be anywhere. There were a thousand holes she could have vanished into. After two weeks of searching, he admitted defeat and returned to Yorkshire. He never thought to look in the orphanages for his child. How could a woman with such strange power die?

His mother introduced him to pretty girl after pretty girl. It became almost a weekly routine ("We'll be having a guest for dinner tonight, Tom."). He ignored all of them. 

He wasn't invited to the wedding of Frank and Cecilia but he went anyway, sitting quietly at the back of the village chapel where nobody would notice him. She walked down with her new short hair in a long white dress and a veil. Still the most beautiful girl Tom had ever seen. Frank lifted her veil to kiss her. She smiled up at him. Her face was radiant. Tom hoped that she would stay as happy as she was on that day.

He watched her grow from a girl into a married woman. She moved into the room above the butcher's shop. She had two boys, three years apart. All the time Tom watched her from afar, hardly ever seeing her face to face or speaking to her but sometimes following her through the village if he spotted her going about her daily business.

Frank's father finally retired and Frank took over the running of the shop, Cecilia always by his side, weighing out steak or making sausages. The boys grew up. Once one of them threw a ball over the walls of the Riddle gardens. Tom came out to return it to them but they ran away, thinking they were going to get a telling off. 

Occasionally Tom wondered about his own child, out there somewhere. Was it a boy or a girl? Were they strange, just as Merope had been? Did they wonder about their father? How much had Merope told them? Tom hoped his child was happy, wherever they were and whatever they were doing.

In reality, his son was deeply unhappy. As long as he could remember, even from when he was a toddler he had been constantly tormented by the older children. They hated him, because he was strange. He made lights dance in the darkness in the middle of the night. They told Vic, who was starting to prefer being called Mrs. Cole, but she never believed them. She slapped them and told them not to tell silly stories. Doris had taught her not to take any nonsense.

Tom Riddle Jr grew older. Every day, he developed better mastery of his powers. The other children stopped trying to make his life a misery and simply tried to stay as far away from him as possible. He scared every one of them.

* * *

AN: This took me about two and a half years to write which… says a lot about my skills with procrastination. Hopefully it gets better written towards the end. It is the longest thing I've ever written, which I'm moderately proud of.

Hope you enjoyed it, dear reader.


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